KarenT

Thanks – that's interesting, and worth further investigation. I've got a bit of learning to do before the next time I need to attempt this.

At last, it worked. Thanks Mike: document set up with 600 psi, exported to PDF for print, 600 dpi. I made no attempt to flatten this time, and I know the printer had to do it, but it might have been whatever I was doing while trying to flatten it first. I substituted the new PDF and the printer's happy. Part of the issue was the printer not being specific about what might have lost resolution in the image, other than a vague "text elements." I was stuck between guesswork and my own incompetence. Thanks to everyone for the assistance.

I think it's the drop shadow on the text that's causing the problem. This is going to recur every time we do a cover, so I'm going to experiment with avoiding transparent effects.

This might be a daft question, but is there anything special I should be doing with the text elements to minimise the loss on flattening? Further conversation with the printers revealed that they thought the 200dpi bits might look less sharp when printed but they still said it was okay to go.

Update: all's well that ends well. The printer is happy. Whatever I did, I'd better make a written note of it so that I can repeat it next time. Thanks to everyone for input.

Thanks. If it's an issue in AD, I feel better for knowing it's not total idiocy on my part. Last time (which was achieved in a combo of Graphic & Pixelmator, IIRC) the printer told us that he'd flattened the file for us, but we were pretty sure we'd sent him a flattened one to start with! I have a learning curve ahead.

Thanks. I did that, and it's made no difference to the file size. Still 1.4MB. I suspect what I'm trying to get straight in my head is (a) why the two apps come up with totally different file sizes for the same process, and if it actually matters. I'll find out the hard way from the printer, I expect...

I've been trying to export a flattened PDF of a book cover for print. The printer will only accept a flattened PDF, no other format, with a minimum of 300 dpi, but I note from another thread that people don't seem to agree what flattened means from one app to the next. A previous cover was designed in another app (Graphic), exported it at 600 dpi, and ended up as a 5MB file. The next cover started life in Graphic but I moved it to Designer a week or so ago to polish it up. So far, so good, but then I hit a wall made either of my own ignorance or some difference between apps: when I exported to PDF, the highest dpi I could select was 400, and the file ended up at 1.2MB. Flattening at 400 dpi came out at 1.4MB. The PDF print preset (300dpi) came out at 853KB. At that point I lost my bottle and ended up playing safe (as I saw it) by exporting the AD file to JPG and then converting the JPG to a 600 dpi PDF in Graphic, which gave me a reassuringly hefty 4.5MB file. I saw a workaround for flattening in another thread that involved grouping the layers in AD but I can't find grouping in the context menu. (I know that sounds lame, but I struggle to see the menus as it is because of the tiny low contrast font that can't be enlarged.) I'm not even sure that flattening is the issue here. For all I know, the printer may well get back to me and tell me the bodged version that I converted via Graphic is fine, in which case I have a clunky but practical solution. But I'd welcome any observations. As you've probably guessed, I'm not a graphics designer by trade. I'm normally at the briefing/commissioning end of the process, but this time, needs must.

Thank you! That worked a treat. The sound you can hear is me banging my head on the desk. I'm glad it's me being thick rather than a missing function. I was trying other tools and all I was doing was distorting the text. I completely missed the simpler solution. That'll teach me to try to do clever stuff at 3:00 in the morning... Thanks again. KT

I've hit a problem trying to transfer a book cover project created in another design app to Affinity. I've been able to copy across all the styles for the cover text without any problem, except for one critical thing – the spine text, which has to be vertical, by which I mean the entire line of text is rotated 90 degrees, not the individual characters. (Something that's very easy to do in Graphic, which is where this project started its life.) I've searched the forum, the help file, and the Workbook, and no joy: am I missing something obvious? I'm hoping this is a case of me being daft rather than that the option isn't available. This is the first time I've used Affinity and I've found it very intuitive, so I'm worried from some of the posts I've read that the vertical text option doesn't exist, in which case I've bought the wrong app for the company's needs... If anyone can help, I'd be very grateful. Vertical text is obviously a deal breaker in designing covers. (Caveat – I'm not a graphics designer, I'm just trying to rescue a project in an emergency.)