How to Improve the Quality of your Edible Images.

If you're printing edible images for cakes, cupcakes, cocktails or chocolate, it is important to ensure the images are the best quality you can achieve so your finished products look professional and you have satisfied customers. Printing on icing sheets and wafer paper can be more difficult than it seems. Although the range of colours and colour intensities achievable by edible ink and papers is different to that of regular ink and paper, it is still possible to achieve high-quality, vibrant edible images as well as closely matching the desired colours of your on-screen designs. 

You will also find variations in your edible prints depending on whether you are printing on icing sheets or wafer paper - if high quality prints are important then the best medium to use would be icing sheets as the quality and vibrancy of images achievable is much higher. Wafer paper will not produce prints as vibrant but is a great cost-effective alternative, and with the right settings, high quality prints can still be achieved.

We've put together a comprehensive guide with our best recommendations to achieving the highest-quality prints with your edible printer and edible inks on various mediums. Please note that these are our tried and tested recommendations and you may still require some trial and error when printing your designs for the finish you desire!

Tips for Printing High Quality Edible Images

1. Choose images with a high resolution.
2. Edit the image before printing.
3. Download the printer driver to your device to give you more scope on the colours and adjust colours. 
4. Select optimal print settings.
5. Trial different settings and media types.

Choose Images with a High Resolution

Possibly the most important step of all is to ensure the original image you are trying to print is a high resolution image ant not blurry or pixelated. This is particularly important if you are enlarging your image for printing for a larger cake topper etc. Always ensure you obtain logos and artwork from your customers in the correct size and format - just copying these from their website or email footers for example will result in a lower resolution image than required.

If you have a poor quality image on screen to being with - no amount of changing settings will result in a high quality image once printed on edible paper so this is an imperative step!

Edit the Image Prior to Printing

When it comes to printing (of any kind) what we see on screen can look different to what is printed. Images will never look as vibrant as on screen and there are variations with colours due to the different colour modes but there are ways to improve this. While there are ways to get a more accurate colour match on screen to on print by calibrating your monitor, we still recommend editing your images and experimenting with settings until you reach the desired finish. 

There are several different image editing software packages available, one of our favourite being Adobe Lightroom due to it's user-friendliness and low cost options. Whichever software package you choose to use, there are a number of editing settings to play around with. Our recommendations for producing the best quality images are the following:

• Increase the contrast of the image.
• Increase both the saturation and vibrancy (the image should look brighter on screen than you wish it to look on paper.)
• Increase the sharpening to add more detail.
• Depending on the image, you may also want to increase the brightness, but this can make the colours lighter.

As you can see in the above images, the edited version is much brighter and more detailed (perhaps a little too much so for on screen) - but once printed on icing sheets, the second edible image was much higher quality than the unedited version.

Download the Printer Driver

In order to access a full colour range for printing your edible images, it is important to download the correct, up-to-date Canon printer driver for your printer model. The link to the current drivers for our Canon PIXMA edible printers can be found here:

• Canon PIXMA TS705a
• Canon PIXMA TS6350
• Canon PIXMA iX6850

Once downloaded, the colours can be adjusted accordingly. See our blog post on adjusting the colours on your edible printer for how to do this.

Select Optimal Print Settings

Choosing the right print settings can have a huge impact on the colours and quality of your edible prints. While this can take some trial and error depending on the design you are printing and on what type of edible paper (icing sheets, wafer paper or chocolate transfers) we recommend trying the following settings:

For Icing Sheets

• Set Media Type to envelope or ensure to turn 'Printer Abrasion - ON' in the maintenance tab of the control panel and print on normal paper - both of these setting will ensure the rollers are raised to compensate for the thickness of icing sheets.
• Set Quality to best - this will feed the icing sheets through the printer more slowly, resulting in a better quality print.

For Wafer Paper/Card and Chocolate Transfers 

• Set Media Type to plain paper or photo.
• Set Quality to normal or best.

It's important to note that printing on best quality will use a higher volume of ink per print and will also take considerably longer to print so if you have a high volume of prints to so it may be worth trying normal quality to speed up the process and preserve your edible ink. We always recommend trying out your prints on normal paper first before wasting more expensive edible paper, and print one copy on your chosen edible paper to test again before printing in bulk.

Another thing to note is the colour mode you are printing your image in - while most colours can be replicated when printed with edible inks, if you are trying to match the colours more closely, for example if printing corporate cake toppers with a company logo, we recommend you print the logo in a CMYK format rather than the RGB format which is used for digital print - you should ask your clients to provide their artwork in this format if required. While the colours may look slightly different on screen, when printed this format should provide a better match. 

Trial Different Settings and Media Types

As we've discussed above, edible printing is not an exact science and different types of designs and images may require different degrees of editing and varied print settings. Trial and error will be required, particularly when first starting out in edible printing! 

If you have any other questions about using your edible printer, our knowledgable and friendly team are here to help! Just get in touch by emailing our Support Team at support@edibleprintsupplies.co.uk or giving us a call on 01254 825786. We also have a number of other edible printing blog posts and plenty of hints and tips on our social media pages, you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok - follow us and tag us in your posts if these tips have helped with your edible printing!