Affinity Photo Documents for Professional Printer

[rdelrossi]

I've designed a menu for a holiday party and I'm trying to get my local professional printer to produce it. She says everything I send over is too low resolution. Instinctively, I know she's right. Despite setting my DPI to 300 in Affinity Photo, the export of my 5-inch by 7-inch document to PDF is a measly 500K. A JPG at top quality is 600K.

My professi onal printer uses Photoshop so she's at a loss to tell me what I'm doing wrong with Affinity Photo. Attached is a Photoshop dialog box she sent over that shows, when properly set up, my document weighs in at over 12 megabytes. 

No matter how many different ways I try it, I'm not creating the document correctly for the printer. Clearly, I'm a newbie, so be gentle, please, and someone tell me what I'm doing wrong 🙂

Thanks in advance, 

-- Robert

[RichardMH]

There are a few options in PDF Export. Which are you using. I just tried PDF (for print) preset and got a 124Mb image at 300DPI. In Export you can see the output file size. You can change settings in More. Maybe post up your document so we can see whats happening?

[rdelrossi]

Thanks for the reply, @RichardMH. I tried a few different presets, including PDF for Print and Press Ready, but the preview matches the output (around 600K). 

I suspect, then, that this has something to do with how I initially created the document (which was 5-inch by 7-inches at 300 DPI).

Can I ask, in your example, what were the parameters of your new document that yielded a 124Mb export image? 

 

 

[RichardMH]

6024 X 4024 pixels. I cropped to 2100X 1500 pixels so its 7 X 5 at 300 dpi and the pdf is still 17MB. What size does Resize Document say?

[rdelrossi]

This is clearly the part I don't fully grasp, @RichardMH. I started Affinity Photo and then created a new document with a size of 5 inch by 7 inches and a 300 DPI. When I try to export that as PDF (for print) the export size is estimated at (and, in fact, is) 2.51 Kb.

 

[Joachim_L]

29 minutes ago, rdelrossi said:

When I try to export that as PDF (for print) the export size is estimated at (and, in fact, is) 2.51 Kb.

Sounds like an empty document, so the file size is correct. Could you upload your Affinity Photo file here? Everything else would be guessing.

[Pšenda]

33 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

Sounds like an empty document,

I don't think if the document was empty, the printer wouldn't send him this.

6 hours ago, rdelrossi said:

Attached is a Photoshop dialog box she sent over that shows, when properly set up, my document weighs in at over 12 megabytes. 

Despite the fact that a empty document would have 500 kB?! That's kind of for zero information.

 

6 hours ago, rdelrossi said:

Instinctively, I know she's right.

Try read this PDF into Affinity, and look on his quality. 

[Joachim_L]

1 hour ago, Pšenda said:

I don't think if the document was empty, the printer wouldn't send him this.

What should be the content of a 2.51 KB file?

[Pšenda]

44 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

What should be the content of a 2.51 KB file?

I assumed it was a file from the first post.

8 hours ago, rdelrossi said:

I've designed a menu for a holiday party and I'm trying to get my local professional printer to produce it. She says everything I send over is too low resolution. Instinctively, I know she's right. Despite setting my DPI to 300 in Affinity Photo, the export of my 5-inch by 7-inch document to PDF is a measly 500K. A JPG at top quality is 600K.

For a new, ie logically empty file, a small size is perhaps expected.

[rdelrossi]

I appreciate the help, everyone. Thanks for chiming in.

Here's the Affinity Photo document, @Joachim_L.

211221b - Christmas Eve Menu 300.afphoto

[R C-R]

29 minutes ago, rdelrossi said:

Here's the Affinity Photo document

The only thing I can see that seems like it might be at too low a pixel resolution is the lyf-ohwhatfun-pngs_lyf-ohwhatfun-brushes-7 image layer -- it shows as 891x890 px @ 191x192dpi; if I use the popup to reset it to original size it is still 891x890 px but at 300 dpi it covers less of the page.

Regardless, the only way I can see that "everything" would be at too low a resolution is if your pro printer is trying to print to a page size larger than 5x7 inches & enlarging everything to cover all or most of the page.

Aside from that, the AP file you attached seems to be considerably different from what you posted in the screenshots in your first post, so I am not sure of the relevance of whatever the PS "Image Size" window shows for the image size or its dimensions to your Christmas Menu AP file.

[RichardMH]

Not convinced the problem is at your end.

[R C-R]

55 minutes ago, RichardMH said:

Not convinced the problem is at your end.

Nor am I. I think the printer may be trying to change the printed size to something other than your 5" by 7" page size when printing from Photoshop, if that is what she is doing.

[rdelrossi]

Folks, can't thank you enough. I said I was a "newbie," but I thought I knew enough to get this job done. Perhaps I did, after all 😉 The printer is now satisfied and I'm expecting to have saved Christmas (or at least Christmas Eve dinner). 

Thanks again for all the pointers. Very grateful to you all. What a terrific forum here.

Enjoy the holidays!

-- Robert