Nice alternative to expensive thermo printing, but don't try to clean the printed cards. I experimented with some misprints and found alcohol will not work as a cleaner - it releases the bond between the plastic card and the film the print is on. Using the online app is okay, but I would rather have a program to download to my computer.

These cards are amazing and super vibrant, and you can print pretty tiny barcodes on them with no issues. I have gotten so many lame, blurry thermal PVC cards printed on-site at various places, this system blows them out of the water at a fraction of the price. The only difference between these and thermal PVC (besides the print time) is that they're a little tacky, almost like they have been slightly rubberized. But if you pop them in a plastic ID card holder on a lanyard or a clip, it is impossible to tell the difference. And they are so cheap, if you screw up a print, who cares? In addition to actual company IDs, I print cards for friends just for fun, too, and everyone I've given them too has been impressed. I don't tell them I printed them with a less-than-$100 investment...

A few extra tips are in order for those who have not used inkjet PVC before. First, you'll need a Brainstorm tray, which should be around $20. If you don't have a compatible printer, the Canon TS8120 works great, is compatible with the "M" tray, and is pretty cheap at $55 right now. Unless you really need a fancier printer for some reason, there is no point in getting anything more expensive. I'm not an inkjet guy so this printer is exclusively for cards.

Second, CALIBRATE! Download the templates and enable the calibration layer, then print and adjust your printable safe zone boundary lines. Save the template and that way you won't have any issues with bad alignment. You can afford blowing 36 cents on properly calibrating your template.

Third, do not be afraid of "full bleed" printing. That is the term for printing beyond the boundaries. Make a 2.25" x 3.5" image and center it on the printable area. The edges will print onto the tray itself, but the printer will print right to the edge of the cards, too. Once you (carefully) remove the card (use the holes in the back and poke it out), clean the ink off the edges on the tray with some paper towels, preferably slightly moistened. I use lens cleaning wipes when I'm completely finished just to be safe... just make sure you clean your glasses BEFORE you clean the tray. You could use any moistened towelette of your choice, I just have a giant box of them myself.

Fourth, give them a minute or so to dry. I haven't experimented with mushing my fingers all over them fresh out of the printer, but once I remove them a minute or so later, I have not seen any smearing at all.

Finally, you may want to use the clearcoat method to eliminate the tacky texture that Christopher A. mentioned in his review. It helped on one card I tried it on, but I use plastic ID card holders anyway, so it's not worth the effort in my case. But the cards really do not "pass" without that coating. I looked for hologram stickers to place on top of the cards, but none I found were big enough, so just stick with the clearcoat. It will also obviously help with durability.

I bought these to try out some gift cards I needed to make for my Color Street biz. I had no idea what to expect, I had never done this before. I own a Pixma Pro-100 and man oh man this is absolutely perfect!!! I bought the K-card to be able to print to the cards with my printer. These look exactly like real gift cards. One small thing, I did not like how they feel after printing, there is a coat of something they put on the card to receive the ink so it kind of have a slight tacky feel, even thought the cards do look shiny. The tacky feel is not a very big deal, but I read where someone sprayed some top coat on the card to remove it. I did, AFTER PRINTING, I used Krylon UV clear coat and just sprayed barely over the top and when dried... the cards felt really smooth again.

I would definitely recommend these cards for your card needs. They are also a great value too!

Excellent, excellent, quality! This is the exact same size and thickness of a credit card but you must use the right printer model that supports a special tray that fits this perfectly on. You can also print to the very edge of the card and it'll look perfectly crisp, without any smears! 1 thing I do have a problem with, which might be due to my inexperience or trial errors because this is my first time with the printer and hardware. I bought a Canon TS9120 plus the Brainstorm ID tray to go with it, just so I can print these cards. They provide a template in Word, Photoshop, and some other format but I went with their Photoshop version. I don't have Photoshop but I do have Paint.Net, which I really like and is much easier to use. It was able to open the PSD file from Photoshop but it doesn't end there because it's not exactly ideal to use Paint.Net due to the inability to edit text. Although you can create text with it, it immediately turns into an image so if you want to change it, you'll need to clear the existing and create a new so I only used it to get the layout and instead, used Inkscape, another powerful yet free app to do what I need. I still have to use Paint.Net to get the cutout that I need, for the image side, but I use Inkscape for everything else. If you're interested, let me know and I'll see if there's a way for me to share what I created so you can use it yourself.

Anyway, I purchased these because I use Square and needed some custom gift cards that were just too costly at nearly $2 each! And you have to buy a minimum of 250 if you want it slightly cheaper! Unfortunately, Square doesn't accept gift cards from other suppliers, the kinds with a magnetic stripe so you're stuck with using them. I wanted to sell specialized gift cards and at a discounted rate but with the way Square works, you can't exactly do that! You have to load exactly what the amount is on the gift card, so you can't sell your gift cards at a discount, say 50% off. This is why I'm glad I stumbled on these and they're working absolutely great for me! The solution that I came up with was to use a barcode, system, similar to how many of the old fashioned gift cards work. Obviously, I needed a different code for each card and that's where it's important to use Inkscape, where I can easily go back and change each value quickly, for each card. It might be just as easy with a Word document, not sure, but worth the shot. If I had to buy my cards from Square, for just 1 batch, it would cost me more than I spent on the printer plus the tray plus these cards combined so this is totally worth it!

I must say I was skeptical that these cards would work as stated with my Canon Pro-100 inkjet printer. I also purchased the Canon K Tray they offer and it does perform perfectly.