Why Your Printed Cards Come Out the Wrong Size (and How to Fix It)

You've designed your cards carefully at exactly poker size. You print them, cut them, and they rattle in their sleeves. Or they're a hair too big for the box. Or the two halves of your board don't line up.

The file is almost certainly fine. Your printer, or more precisely your print dialog, is resizing the page.

The usual culprit: "Fit to page"

Most print dialogs default to shrinking pages so nothing falls into the area the printer can't reach. It's often called "Fit to page", "Shrink oversized pages" or "Scale to fit", and it typically shrinks the page to 94–97%.

On a document, you'd never notice. On a card, 3% is about 2 mm off the width and 3 mm off the height of a poker card. That's enough to make it loose in a sleeve and visibly smaller than a real card.

Check your printer in two minutes

Print a calibration page: one sheet with a 50 mm square, a poker card outline and rulers.

Printer calibration page

Print one Letter or A4 page with a 50 mm square, a poker card outline and rulers to check your printer prints cards at the right size, and learn how to fix it when it doesn’t. Free, in your browser, with no sign-up.

1. Download the PDF for Letter or A4.
2. Print it at 100% ("Actual size").
3. Measure the square with a ruler, across and down. It should be exactly 50 mm (about 2 inches).
4. Lay a real poker card on the outline. It should match.

If the square is too small

Your print dialog is scaling the page. Choose "Actual size" or a 100% scale, and turn off "Fit to page", "Shrink oversized pages" and "Scale to fit". Where to find it:

• Adobe Acrobat and Reader: under Page Sizing & Handling, choose "Actual size".
• Chrome and Edge: under More settings, set Scale to Custom, 100.
• Preview on a Mac: set Scale to 100%.

Print the test page again until the square measures 50 mm.

If it's still wrong at 100%

• Paper size mismatch. An A4 page printed on Letter paper (or the other way round) can be scaled to fit. Make sure the paper size in the dialog matches the paper in the tray, and the file.
• Printer driver settings. Some drivers have their own "Fit to page" or "Borderless" setting that enlarges the page. Look in the printer's own preferences, not just the app's print dialog.
• One direction off, not the other. If it's right across but wrong down, the paper is slipping. Try a different paper, clean the rollers, or run the printer's own alignment tool.

If the size is right but the cut is off

That's a different problem: the cards are the right size, but cut slightly off-centre. The fix is bleed: art that runs 3 mm past the cut line, so a cut that drifts still lands on colour. Cut on the cut marks, not the art's edge. More in Bleed, Trim and Safe Zone Explained.

If the file is the problem

Rarely, the file itself is the wrong size. The usual cause is art made at the wrong pixel size, then stretched to fit. At 300 DPI, a poker card is 750 × 1050 px, or 821 × 1121 px with a 3 mm bleed. For any other size:

Print size calculator

Convert millimetres, inches and pixels at any DPI, see the image size a card needs with its bleed, and how many cards fit a sheet of Letter, A4 or A3. Free, in your browser, with no sign-up.

Getting it right every time

• Calibrate each printer once, and again after driver updates.
• Use files with cut marks and bleed. Decklab AI's print-and-play PDFs have both, and the app includes the same test page, so a printer that passes it prints your cards at the right size. For card images from elsewhere:

Print-and-play PDF maker

Turn your card images into a print-and-play PDF: pick the card size and paper, add cut marks and backs for double-sided or fold-and-glue printing, and set how many of each card. Free, in your browser, with no sign-up.

• Print one sheet and measure a card before printing the whole deck.

Two minutes with a ruler saves a reprint, and a deck that fits its sleeves feels like a real game.