Printing from a web-generated QR Code

Our IT Services team Optimo Asia launched a public QR Code generation service gen-qrcode.com for a few days and the responses are indeed encouraging.

For marketing services companies like us, one of the most important applications of QR Code is printing, in which the code images are required to be in much greater resolution. For a QR Code to be printed in 10" X 10" via offset printing, each side of the code needs to be at least 3,000px!

Enlarging directly a web-generated QR Code for printing has a big disadvantage. Since it is in RGB color mode by default, during enlargement the interpolation process from the imaging software will soften the edges and it will result in lower accuracy during snapping.

Keep in mind the following tips you can, however, create large format QR Code images from web-generated ones with razor sharp quality:

1. Generate your QR Code in 300px or above
2. Download and import it into an imaging software such as photoshop or the free IrfanView
3. Convert the image to 1-bit image (Photoshop calls it bitmap, IrfanView calls it 2 Colors image, others may call it pure Black and White image)
4. Now you can enlarge by re-sampling it to as big as you need without losing the data bits
5. Convert the image back to RGB or CMYK color mode if you need to colorize it, or else it will be good to be printed or inserted into other artwork material

It's that simple.