Print size when using pixel layers

[Hannah_captures_life]

Printing with raster brushes on affinity designer

Hi all.  I’ve been experimenting with AF recently because I wanted the liberty to create whatever I wanted without having to worry about print size if I use only vector brushes.  But what I haven’t been able to work out is the moment you apply a pixel layer and use raster brushes, do you have to consider print size? If so, how do you pre-set that before beginning your work?
Thanks in advance.

[Dan C]

Hi @Hannah_captures_life,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums 

23 hours ago, Hannah_captures_life said:

what I haven’t been able to work out is the moment you apply a pixel layer and use raster brushes, do you have to consider print size? If so, how do you pre-set that before beginning your work?

Firstly when creating your Affinity document, if you plan on printing this, you need to consider the physical size of the document and the DPI used.

The majority of print projects will use 300DPI, but for example if you were designing a 40ft long banner, you certainly wouldn't need such a high DPI value - therefore this isn't something we can directly recommend as it will change depending on the file, printer & use case for the design.

If you know that you'll always be printing to A4 from your printer at home, then I'd recommend setting up documents using this page size @ 300DPI - but do be aware that the physical dimensions and DPI of any document in Affinity can be changed at any time.

If this is done before creating any pixel content, then you don't need to worry about your design as this will all scale correctly. If you have already created pixel content before resizing your document then do be aware the pixel content will be resampled by default, which may reduce the quality of the pixel content, depending on how much you change the documents size.

I hope this helps!