Guide · artwork & materials
Can you print AI-generated artwork?
Yes — and if a printer has already told you no, this page explains what they were looking at. An AI design that looks finished on a phone is usually three quarters of a print file. The last quarter is the part a press cares about, and it is fixable at a fixed price.
Why the other printer said no
It is not laziness
Most print shops take a file and put it on a press. Their workflow assumes the artwork arrives print-ready, and when it does not, the honest answer is “we cannot use this” — because an AI image is a flattened picture. There are no layers, no text boxes, no logo file. Nothing in it can be edited, so there is nothing for a normal prepress step to correct.
That is a real limitation and they are right about it. It is also the whole opportunity: the file cannot be edited, but it can be rebuilt — the picture kept, the broken parts made again properly. That is a studio job rather than a prepress job, which is why it needs a price rather than a rejection.
What we print for this
Proofed before they run
The four things that go wrong
In the order they matter
1. The text was never type. This is the big one, and the one no software fixes. When an image generator writes “OPENING HOURS” it is not setting words — it is drawing shapes that look like letters. Zoom in and you find bent stems, invented characters and words that are almost right. On a phone your eye reads through it. At 300dpi on a menu it is unmistakable, and no amount of upscaling helps: sharpening a wrong letter gives you a crisp wrong letter.
The fix is to set it again in real type, matched to the look of the original, on top of the image. Then it is genuine text: correct, selectable, sharp at any size, and correctable when you decide the price changed.
2. The logo was never a logo. If your brand is in the picture, the generator has redrawn it from memory — slightly the wrong proportions, edges soft, one side not matching the other. Tracing that does not save it. As our own setup page puts it: tracing produces a crisp vector of the artefacts. It has to be drawn again from your real logo, or from scratch if the real one is lost.
3. There are not enough pixels. The honest arithmetic, for the square image most generators hand you at 1024 × 1024:
| What it is for | Read from | Resolution | Biggest it prints |
|---|---|---|---|
| A card, a menu, a flyer | the hand | 300dpi | 87mm |
| A poster on a wall | 1 metre | 150dpi | 173mm |
| A banner or a sign | 3 metres | 100dpi | 260mm |
So a 1024-pixel AI image is almost exactly a business card, and nowhere near an A3 poster — A3 at 300dpi wants 3508 × 4961 pixels, about three and a half times more on each side. Upscaling genuinely helps here, on the photographic and painted parts, and it will usually buy you a size or two. It will not buy you a three-metre banner from a phone-sized picture, and anyone who tells you otherwise is going to hand you a soft one.
4. RGB, no bleed, wrong shape. The dull one. Screen colour has to become press colour, the artwork needs 3mm of bleed past the trim, and a square image has to become the shape of the thing you are printing. This is ordinary prepress and it is the cheapest part.
What each fix costs
Fixed price, no quote needed for the first two
| What is wrong | What we do | Price |
|---|---|---|
| RGB, no bleed, wrong size, colour drifting | Print-ready fix | $29 |
| A flat logo that needs to be sharp at any size | Logo vectorised | $49 |
| A logo the generator invented, or one only you have a photo of | Logo redrawn | from $120 |
| Text to reset, layout to rebuild at print size | Design from scratch | quoted |
Printing it with us? The setup is free. The print-ready fix — bleed, size, colour, resolution — comes with every print order. Vectorising, a redraw or a rebuilt layout is artwork work, priced as above and quoted before we start. The setup comes with it — we would rather spend twenty minutes fixing your file than have you receive something soft and blame the press.
Check it yourself first, free
Nothing is uploaded
Before you ask anyone: drop your AI image into the print resolution checker. It tells you the largest size that image can print at, in millimetres, and it does the whole thing inside your own browser — the file never leaves your computer and never reaches us.
If it says your image is big enough for what you want, you may only need the $29 fix. If it says it is not, you now know that before you have paid anyone, which is the entire point of putting the tool there.
Also useful: logo to vector for a flat logo, and add bleed and trim marks once the artwork is the right size.
How it runs
Send what you have
The AI image, at the biggest size you can export it. A screenshot is the worst version of your own file — go back to the generator and download the original if you still can.
We tell you what it needs, before you pay
Which of the four problems it has, what each costs, and honestly whether it is worth fixing or faster to draw again. Sometimes the answer is that the image is fine and only the text has to be reset.
You approve a proof on your phone
The rebuilt file, at print size. Zoom in on the text that used to be wrong. Nothing goes to press until you say so.
Printed and delivered, usually in 2 to 4 working days from payment
And you keep the print-ready file, so the next run does not start here again.
Most of the AI artwork we are sent is headed for one of four things: flyers and menus, a poster, stickers, or a corflute sign. Each of those pages prices the job itself; the setup above is what gets your file onto it.
Common questions
Can you just upscale my AI image?
We can, and it helps — on the photographic and painted parts of the picture. It does nothing for text, because upscaling sharpens what is there and the letters were never letters. If your artwork has words in it, those words have to be set again in real type. Anyone promising that upscaling alone will fix a garbled headline has not zoomed in on it.
Why did another printer reject the file outright?
Because an AI image is flat — no layers, no text, no logo file — so there is nothing in it a normal prepress step can edit. They are right that it cannot be corrected. It can be rebuilt, which is a different job, and one most print shops do not sell.
How big can my AI image actually print?
Divide its pixel width by 300 and multiply by 25.4 for millimetres at full sharpness — a 1024-pixel image is about 87mm. Further away, you need less: 150dpi is fine for a poster read at a metre, 100dpi for a banner read from across a car park. The resolution checker does that arithmetic for you against the actual file.
Will the reprinted text look like the original?
Close, and usually better. We match the weight, the spacing and the feel of what the generator drew, using a real typeface. What you lose is the wrongness; what you gain is text that stays sharp at any size and can be edited next time your hours change.
Can I print an AI image of a real brand, person or artist's style?
You need the right to print what you send us, the same as any other artwork — an image being AI-generated does not change who owns what is in it. If it carries someone else's logo, a recognisable person, or is presented as another artist's work, please have that sorted before you order. If you are not sure, ask the desk and we will tell you straight rather than print it and find out later.
Is it cheaper to just have you design it?
Sometimes, and we will say so. If the image needs an upscale, a logo redraw and every line of text reset, you are paying to salvage something that a design from scratch would deliver cleanly and own outright. We would rather tell you that at the quote than at the invoice.
What if it still prints badly?
You approve a proof at print size before anything runs, which is where a soft image or a wrong word gets caught. If it comes back not matching the proof you approved, that is on us and it is remade under the reprints policy.
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