Printer told me my Affinity Photo 300 dpi postcard design was exported at 72 dpi

[Basilio1]

Just want to say, after years of using PhotoShop, I was unable to afford upgrade subscriptions when I moved to MACOS High Sierra. Affinity Photo is a tremendous alternative. I recently had this PDF Export problem. A printer I have worked with for years to do postcards told me my PDF Export of a design in Affinity Photo was only 72 DPI. I had set the doc up as a 4x6 postcard with bleed (4.25 inches by 6.25 inches), and choose the default profile for CYMK instead of RGB color. My design contained 3 images. Two of those were video screen captures and were 72 DPI PNGs, while the other was a 400 DPI photo. All the images were reduced more than 50% from their imported sizes, so I thought the PNGs would still get by. The other layers contained limited text and a solid background color. When I exported I chose the PDF (for print) at 300 DPI, using the Bilinear default. I was confused by the Printer's rejection of the PDF, since this is more or less the same way I used to set up PhotoShop docs, and I had used lower res images in the past without the entire PDF being rejected as 72 DPI. I read some info from Affinity regarding "Upsampling" and info about the Bicubic export choice. I then went to Doc Setup and did an Upsample at 300 DPI, which didn't appear to take any time or change anything - because it was already 300 DPI(?) Then I exported the PDF (for print) at 400 DPI and chose Bicubic option, no rasterizing. In the resulting PDF, the PNG images looked a tiny bit clearer on my monitor, but I wasn't sure about printing. Printer said the updated files were good and ran the job (which I haven't received yet). Although what I did worked, it was a shot in the dark. I'm interested to know why this Export to PDF was more involved than what I used to do in PhotoShop.

[Basilio1]

Just to clarify the info at the beginning of my post: I DID also initially set up the postcard doc at 300 DPI, as well as CYMK color profile.

[Dan C]

Hi @Basilio1,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums

The easiest way for us to investigate this is with a copy of your document - although I do understand you have since been able to resolve this export issue and therefore it may be difficult for us to retroactively explain the cause of this, but we can certainly try!

Could you please provide a copy of your .afphoto file, and the exported PDF here so we can help further?

If you'd like a private upload link for these files, please do let me know!

[Basilio1]

Thanks for the quick reply. I actually did a Save As before trying to do the Upsampling and exporting the PDFs of the postcard a 2nd time. Two versions of postcard FRONT and BACK in Affinity Photo, and two versions of each exported as PDFs are attached.

Watch Party Postcard Back Upsample.afphoto Watch Party Postcard Back.afphoto Watch Party Postcard Front.afphoto Watch Party Postcard Front Resample.afphoto Watch Party Postcard Front.pdf Watch Party Postcard Back.pdf Watch Party Postcard Front Upsample.pdf Watch Party Postcard Back Upsample.pdf