Why can't I set my new document to 600 dpi?

[zelgados]

This is for printing a comic book.

According to: https://mckelvie.tumblr.com/post/167235929653/comic-book-page-technical-specifications

My page needs to be set up as follows:

6.875 by 10.438 inches 

When I set up my document in Designer or Photo the max dpi is 400. The article says it needs to be 600 dpi in some cases. Also on Comixology's page they allow documents up to 600 dpi as well. I'm told that the higher the dpi the better.

So why can't I choose 600 dpi on the slider? It maxes out at 400.

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forums @zelgados

You can set a DPI of 600 by typing the value in manually.
I have no idea why the presets don’t allow for that value – I guess the team thought it was unusual to need a DPI so high, in general use, given what sort of output the software was designed to create.

Note: You can create your own presets and templates so you don't have to keep setting that value.

[Alfred]

3 hours ago, zelgados said:

According to: https://mckelvie.tumblr.com/post/167235929653/comic-book-page-technical-specifications

My page needs to be set up as follows:

6.875 by 10.438 inches

That’s actually the size including the bleed area, not the size of the page itself. Either way, it’s a rather odd size! In the linked article it says

Quote

A standard US comic book page size is 6.875 by 10.438 inches bleed, 6.625 by 10.187 inches trim

but there’s clearly some inconsistent rounding applied, with 10.4375 being rounded up and 10.1875 being rounded down. Other sources suggest that the standard trimmed size is 6.625 by 10.125 inches, and adding a 0.125 inch bleed area would bring that up to 6.875 by 10.375 inches.

2 hours ago, GarryP said:

I have no idea why the presets don’t allow for that value – I guess the team thought it was unusual to need a DPI so high, in general use, given what sort of output the software was designed to create.

I can’t claim any expertise in this area, but my impression is that it’s not unusual for a PPI value of 600 or 1200 to be required.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, zelgados said:

The article says it needs to be 600 dpi in some cases.

8 minutes ago, Alfred said:

I can’t claim any expertise in this area, but my impression is that it’s not unusual for a PPI value of 600 or 1200 to be required.

The article mentions 1-bit graphic: "If your linework is aliased – meaning it’s pure black and white pixels, with no grey edges – 600dpi is essential to print smoothly".

Note: Affinity can't work yet with 1-bit grafik but converts them to 8-bit, so your images will be antialiased. This reduces the need for 600 dpi document resolution and makes it more suitable with common 300 dpi. (Just in case you want to save space or memory)

Edited December 26, 2021 by thomaso

[zelgados]

Thanks for the help. I didn't realize you could type in that box.

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, GarryP said:

I have no idea why the presets don’t allow for that value – I guess the team thought it was unusual to need a DPI so high, in general use, given what sort of output the software was designed to create.

They are not really 'presets' so much as they are stops -- places on the slider it will snap to. My guess about why there is not a larger stop at 600, 1200, or whatever is they though that a lager range would make it harder to set the DPI to other values than the provided stops.

Of course, this was before they implemented custom presets & templates, so now we can create presets at whatever DPI we want.

[GarryP]

14 hours ago, R C-R said:

They are not really 'presets' so much as they are stops -- places on the slider it will snap to.

On Windows there is a list of values rather than a slider – see attached screenshots.
If there’s a slider on Mac I don’t know why there is a difference, but I feel sure that I have seen this asked before.

[R C-R]

8 hours ago, GarryP said:

On Windows there is a list of values rather than a slider – see attached screenshots.

On my Mac, in both AP & AD in the New Document window clicking on the DPI disclosure triangle pops up a slider, like this:

In the Designer, in the File > Document Setup window it is like you show for Windows, with a popup list of preset values. But in Photo, in the Document > Resize Document window the popup also shows a slider like in the above.

The tick marks on the sliders correspond to the same six preset DPI's ranging from 72 to 400 DPI.

There is not much consistency for this between the apps, but I guess they went with the six presets on all of them but implemented differently. Confusing, is it not?

[Pšenda]

3 hours ago, R C-R said:

shows a slider

This is the least suitable form of input for choosing DPI. The classic combobox, where the user chooses the value he needs, is definitely faster and more understandable, than any search for value using the slider.

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

This is the least suitable form of input for choosing DPI. The classic combobox, where the user chooses the value he needs, is definitely faster and more understandable, than any search for value using the slider.

The way it works on a Mac is the slider will stop at each of those tick marks unless you drag to some point between them -- it is kind of like a notch or detent in a physical slider. So in use it is actually very quick & easy to set the DPI precisely to any of the six ones like shown in the popups in the post above by @GarryP.

[Pšenda]

11 hours ago, R C-R said:

the slider will stop at each of those tick marks unless you drag to some point between them -- it is kind of like a notch or detent in a physical slider. So in use it is actually very quick & easy to set the DPI precisely to any of the six ones

It is clear to me how this slider works, as does the zoom slider in the Navigator panel. But it's definitely easier for me to choose the exact DPI value whose value is displayed in the combobox items, mthan to remember that 300 dpi is the fourth stop of the slider. And if I don't remember the values/slider breakpoints, which is very likely, then I have to gradually test the breakpoints/values to see if it's finally the right value I'm looking for and which I want to set. And if they added other completely normal and standard values (600, 1200, 2400), which they should do due to the frequency of queries, the orientation in the slider will worsen. Completely wrong UX for me.

P. S. I hope they don't do it in the Windows version.

Edited December 28, 2021 by Pšenda

[RNKLN]

Interestingly, when you do an export to PDF (on Mac), the user interface for this setting is different:

[R C-R]

7 hours ago, Pšenda said:

But it's definitely easier for me to choose the exact DPI value whose value is displayed in the combobox items, mthan to remember that 300 dpi is the fourth stop of the slider.

You don't have to remember which stop is which. The numeric display updates in realtime as you move the slider so you can see the value of each stop there.

In that respect, it is just like the slider in the Navigation panel, both for the realtime update & for the slider not going beyond a fairly large but far from the largest zoom value users might frequently want or need to use in a project.

Personally, I do not see any real advantage of a popup value list over a popup slider. Neither one could possibly span the full range of values; both require users to manually enter values outside whatever ranges they cover; but the slider has a very slight edge in terms of using less screen space.

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, RNKLN said:

Interestingly, when you do an export to PDF (on Mac), the user interface for this setting is different:

It is the same for the SVG & EPS export options, but for none of them does the popup list go any higher than 400 DPI, so just like for the slider UI users have to enter any other value manually.