Flexibility for final output - A4 vs A3

[hiker135]

Hi,

I am designing a puzzle-series in form of a 'newspaper', and have used an A4 paper size for my layout, text styles etc in my first part, thinking mostly of home-printing on A4 paper. But I now realise that I might need more flexibility, e.g. to also support A4 printed on A3 as booklet (which I assume will be easy enough to do during printing), but maybe also A3 and A3 as booklet printed on A2 (I am thinking of kickstarter, and might offer different versions of the newspaper).

The A3 and A4 papers must be identical content-wise, just scaled up (reason is that there could be references to line numbers and word number in that line - so if the layout changes, I would have to redo the puzzles).

What are the best option to keep this flexibility, and also final output quality? I can think of a few options, but am not sure which one is best, or if there might be any implications when going to a printer:

1. I design everything as A3 with 300 dpi bitmap pictures, and to create the A4 format I print to a pdf printer with A4 format. Disadvantage for me is that I have to redo the first edition, but that would be acceptable. What would be the impact file-size-wise and quality-wise for the A4 product? Would any pictures be resized to the smaller resolution, or would I get larger A4 size files?
2. Or instead of a printer driver, use some kind of third party tool? Same question about the file size and quality.
3. I keep everything as A4, and print to a pdf printer as A3. Problem is (I assume) that this would mean any rastered images on A3 would be less than 300 dpi(?)
4. I keep everything as A4, and change document size to A3 once I have the final version ready. I tried that (changing spread on master pages with resizing objects, which will then resize the pages). This sounds like an ideal solution as long as original bitmap picture has at least 430 dpi (which will give around 300 dpi on the A3 format). Would this approach still re-scale bitmap pictures to 300dpi on export (to make the more important A4-size version as small as possible)? And is there a risk that word-wrapping etc is affected?
5. Any other suggestions?

Any recommendation or experiences are appreciated!

Thanks!
   Joerg

 

[hiker135]

Thanks a lot for the answer, @BofG. My main problem (and I should have mentioned that) is that I cannot see an option to change the exported PDF size. As far as I can see the options are to either scale up the document (resizing the content, hoping that this doesn't change word wrapping due to floating point errors), or printing to pdf, i.e. using the print driver, which implies that Affinity's way of scaling is not used (or? I would assume that Affinity Publisher then leaves it to the print driver to decide what to do with regards to rasterising images? Unfortunately my knowledge about PDF, print driver and rasterisation is ... somewhat limited )

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, BofG said:

If I was doing this in Designer I would opt for A4 and double the image sizes, then downsample images in the pdf export options.

Maybe I am just more stupid than normal today, but I do not see any way to downsample anything in the AD export options. Can you tll me where to find that?

[MEB]

R C-R,
Enter new dimensions values when exporting the document and select the Resample algorithm.
OR check the More button/options when exporting to PDF which is what i believe BofG is referring to.

[R C-R]

22 minutes ago, MEB said:

Enter new dimensions values when exporting the document and select the Resample algorithm.

I do not see (in any Affinity app) any place to enter new dimensional values for PDF exports.

24 minutes ago, MEB said:

OR check the More button/options when exporting to PDF which is what i believe BofG is referring to.

If you mean Export > PDF > More > Downsample images greater than "x" DPI, that option is available in all the Affinity apps, but I am not sure that is a solution for resizing the (entire) PDF export page size.

[MEB]

Hi R C-R,
I was replying to your question in particular - i didn't read the whole thread. The first point i mentioned was to all formats in general. The second was to PDFs.

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, MEB said:

Hi R C-R,
I was replying to your question in particular - i didn't read the whole thread. The first point i mentioned was to all formats in general. The second was to PDFs.

I am still not clear about this. Are you saying there is a way to change the document dimensions when exporting to every supported format, PDF included?

Also, would downsampling images somehow automatically resize the page size of the PDF document?

[MEB]

22 minutes ago, BofG said:

So is that actually possible for a PDF export from Publisher? It's not an option in Designer.

Hi BofG,
No, entering new dimensions and selecting a Resample algorithm is only possible for non-document format types (raster formats) like TIFF, PNG's etc. I was replying directly to R C-R because he mentioned resampling exports generically ("Maybe I am just more stupid than normal today, but I do not see any way to downsample anything in the AD export options. Can you tll me where to find that?").
Sorry if i caused more confusion.

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, MEB said:

I was replying directly to R C-R because he mentioned resampling exports generically...

And I was not clear that I meant for PDF exports, so I too am sorry for any confusion I might have caused.

[Wosven]

I would try working in the larger size, and if needed, creating a new document at a smaller size in which I would import the other document or a PDF of it.

I would resample only if it doesn't give bad result (pixellated) or if the new file exported to PDF give a really large file.

[hiker135]

I did some tests, using a >300dpi picture on an A4 page. Printing it as 72dpi A3/A4 format. The surprising result was that both files were close to identical (5 or 6 byte differences, and mostly binary identical, or bytes shifted). So it looks like printing to A3 will first raster the image at the requested dpi, then rescaling the whole page. So that's totally useless.

Additionally, the A4 printed-to-pdf file was only 1/5th of the size of the pdf exported from A.P to A4 rastered at 72dpi- and it was clearly visible, the exported pdf looked way better. When I rescaled the document to A3 in A.P., and then exported it rastered to 72dpi, the A3 page was as expected larger than the A4 export, and looked better.

So using 'print to pdf' is definitely a no-go. Now for me it's only a decision to either work in A4 with my existing layout and styles (and then rescale to A3 before exporting), or changing my styles and work in A3. In my tests (where I needed exact word wrapping) rescaling worked perfectly.

Thank you very much for all your replies and suggestions!