How to Print Custom Collectors Cards

Picking the right photo

• 1

  Choose your favorite photo of your special athlete to place on your card. An ideal photo will have bright, crisp colors and strong lines of movement that direct the viewer's eye.

• 2

  Scan a photo printed on film into a digital format and save it in a high-resolution format such as a .JPG file. When you scan the photo, scan it in color instead of grayscale and choose a high color quality to produce rich tones and sharper contrast.

• 3

  Crop the photo to a height of 3.5 inches and a width of 2.5 inches, which is the standard baseball card size, using a photo editing program such as Adobe Photoshop or GIMP. Leave enough room in the photo around the subject to provide some ambient space and not allow the image to be hidden by a border.

Picking the Right Border

• 4

  Choose a border for your new card from a favorite card in your collection. When you've found a border you like, scan the card into a digital format and remove the inset photo by highlighting it and cutting it, using your editing program. This will leave you with just the border of the card.

• 5

  Select the border of the card and copy it, then paste it onto your action photo of choice. Ideally, the width of the border should be about 5 percent of the width of the card itself. It could, however, be thicker on the top or bottom to provide space for information such as name, team or date.

• 6

  Clear the border of any unwanted text or other blemishes. This can be done by copying and pasting a solid swatch of the border, by using the color picker tool to select a solid color from the border and painting over the text with that color, or by using a "spot healing" tool in your photo editing program.

• 7

  Add your own text in a location similar to the position of the old text. Typically, the name of the pictured player will appear at the bottom of the card, and other information will follow. Choose a font most closely matching the period of the original card.

• 8

  Save the card in a high-resolution format, such as a .JPG file, once you've finished designing it.

Printing Your Card

• 9

  Print the card from your computer on thick, card-stock photo paper. You can print up to nine standard-size trading cards per sheet of paper.

• 10

  Check your printer's manual to determine which way to feed your card-stock paper. Load the paper so that the card will print on the glossy side.

• 11

  Cut out the cards using a sharp blade to ensure smooth edges once the ink dries. Then pass them out to friends and family and start trading.