This article will show you how to produce your own display labels at home from a wide range of customizable options.
GW Acrylic display products
and Iain's Display Accessories
are the recommended pairing for final display as they have been tested hand-in-hand with these labels.
Print amazing display labels for your collection at home
When you add items to your portfolios, Star Wars Tracker will automatically create a beautiful display label for you. On your portfolio item page, the last section will contain a Display Label section.
If you are happy with the generated label, then you can simply right click the image and save as ... to a place on your computer for printing at a later time.
Loose figure label for Luke Skywalker with default options
If you are not quite happy with the default label generation, then you can get more advanced. Simply click the Generate and Download button and you will have a variety of options presented that you can play with.
A new dialog window will be displayed showing the default generation of the label, and the options selected that result in this. From here, it's simply a matter of playing with the options until you achieve what you are after.
Advanced label generation for loose figures
Each option can be adjusted to include or exclude certain elements from the final label design. For example, you can remove the stock figure image, or change the dimensions of the label depending on your final use.
Each option has an information tooltip that further explains the role of that element in the final label design. When you want to see the effect of your changes, click the Generate button to refresh the image display.
Note that information you have included in your portfolio record for the Label Information will be included in the generated display label. This is limited to 4 lines of text, but is perfect for supplying additional information about the item on display. In the case of loose figures, putting country of origin information is a great idea. For carded figures, you may find it useful to include details like yellow bubble or cracked bubble. It's completely up to you - these are your labels!
Below shows an adjusted label sized to fit on the excellent Deluxe Figure Stands
. It removed the stock image, changes the label size and sets the theme colour to green.
Creating a label for use on a Deluxe Figure Stand
Labels can also be generated for your carded figure items. The label generation gives some slightly different settings to play with, but the mechanism is the same.
Creating a label for use with a carded figure
Labels are also available for your power of the force coins. Again, you have some options to play with to get the look just right.
Creating a label for use with a Luke Hoth power of the force coin
When you have things looking just right, simply click Download and Save and you will be able to find the label image in your usual downloads folder on your computer. When you have done this for all the labels you require, you are ready to move onto printing them.
By now you will have produced a number of JPEG files containing your label images. Instead of printing each one individually, to make most efficient use of your paper it is recommended to arrange these individual images onto a single A4 sized image to print in one go.
Arrange multiple labels onto the same page for efficient printing
Star Wars Tracker labels are produced in high-resolution 300dpi (dots-per-inch) format. Basically this means they will look great when printed. It is recommended to use decent graphics software to arrange and print your labels at 300dpi. Unfortunately, Microsoft paint does not respect the required 300dpi settings and did not produce good results in testing.
However, GIMP
is an excellent free photoshop alternative perfect for the task. For best results, use this
blank A4 size 300dpi printing template
to arrange your labels on. Load it up in your graphics software and arrange your labels on it. This will help ensure your labels are printed at the desired 300dpi.
When you are ready to do your final print run on sticker paper, it is highly recommended to inspect your print preferences and choose the highest quality settings. This is not the time to be frugal! In testing this dramatically improved the clarity of the printed font and image resolution - it just looked so much better. So be sure to go best quality.
Always choose highest quality printer settings
For our testing, selecting the above settings on the printer preferences screen made a big difference to the final print results. It is also wise to check the page/image print properties and ensure that printing will take place with 300dpi.
Always choose highest quality printer settings
Creating your own labels is very economical - you can get 20 or 30 of the biggest labels on a single A4 sheet. So feel free to experiment with various kinds of paper and designs.
At the time of writing, these products produced great results when printed at home.
Below are some examples of what you can do with your labels. It's really only limited by your imagination and creativity!
Luke Skywalker loose figure labels in a variety of designs
Labels to showcase various figure variations
POTF Jawa MOC label in display acrylic
Storage labels for loose figures in polybags
Labels for use on MOC storage boxes
You have the option of including a barcode that identifies the exact portfolio record for your item in Star Wars Tracker. With the iOS or Android app, you can scan this barcode directly from your smart phone to bring up the portfolio item record within the app.
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