I'm curious about digital downloads

[TheSolitaryRaven]

Hello T & M team members !

I am a mixed media altered artist who has markedly changed my creations since joining in 2007 -- going from larger items to smaller, mainly due to excessive postage costs.

I am very much interested in joining the world of digital downloads for some of my art cards and, eventually, my mixed media collages. Maybe even create downloads of pieces for people to create with.

Rather than bombard you all with my questions, might there be one or two kind folks who sell d.d's be willing to help me with getting started ?

I have a basic understanding of what to do ( needs to be at 300 dpi and over 1000 pixels ) and I do use a picture editor which, although is almost 10 years old, still does well for editing, etc... but what I need to know is creating my scanned or photographed image to look exactly the same when printing and so far that's not happening ( printed image has a slightly yellow background tinge, colors are bright but ever so slightly less crisp, etc...)
I expect my future customers to receive a perfect representation as what they see on the screen.

Also, if you know of any websites that give easy to follow tutorials ?

I should add: yes, I signed up with a digital team but had no help whatsoever. Plenty of threads to post their digital creations though.

Your help will be greatly appreciated :)

[TheSolitaryRaven]

Update: so I fiddled around with my Canon Pixma MP150 inkjet printer and was able to create a couple of decent looking prints ( out of 6 prints ).

I found that putting it as a photo print rather than a graphic, it seemed to turn out much better, using both glossy photo paper and premium presentation matte paper. I also clicked ' high ' sharpen -- it was already sharpened in my editor but the extra high seemed to make the image pop a bit more and left it at normal brightness ( putting it at light brightness tended to lightly dull the colors ).
Unfortunately I ran out of color ink but that's okay.

I think my next step is to go to a print shop and have them print out a few examples.

So I guess what I'm not too sure about is print size.

The item I was printing today is a very colorful mixed media collage which I saved at 300 dpi, 1350 x 1650 pixels, image size 4.5 x 5.5 inches.
On the premium matte paper the image came out quite lovely at 6.5 x 5.5 inches with a rather large white border. Do I need to be concerned about border width now ?

Anyway, I ' think ' I am getting a better understanding for digital downloads but it would be nice to hear from other's and what they did to get to where they are now.

[TheSolitaryRaven]

Disregard the above. I figured it out on my own and have two downloads listed, woohoo !

[theboilershopCNC]

Hi Tracy,
I don't have any answers for you but I am in a similar situation to you. You do raise an interesting topic, I will mark this post hoping to learn from others that offer the time to reply.

Thanks
Glen

[PanchromaticaArts]

To get optimum print quality you need to set up profiles. Since you have no control over how the buyer prints something you have no control over the quality of what they produce, nor can you guarantee that it will look as you wanted it. All you can do is be sure that it is possible to get a print of the quality you want. You probably need to add some sort of statement to your listing that print quality is not in your control.