Is there an established quality level nomenclature for hardcopy printing please?

[William Overington]

I am not sure whether this topic is in any way about an Affinity product as such, though it might be in an auxiliary sense in that it could possibly be related because it could possibly relate to to how the PDF document is exported.

Suppose that someone has produced some artwork and wants a hardcopy print and to do tis exports the artwork in a PDF document.

There are various ways to get a hardcopy print.

One is on a typical budget cost home computer printer.

Another is to get a print from a print facility, either go there or use an online upload with the print arriving by the postal service or a courier.

There are various types of printing equipment, various printing techniques, various types of ink, and maybe various other factors of which I am unaware at present.

A wide spectum from the budget home printer to the printing of highest quality art gallery framed prints that are available to buy, sometimes for hundreds of pounds. The type of paper is also relevant.

So is there some classification scale for hardcopy output please, such as Level (low nuber) for the home printer to Level (high number) for the highest quality art gallery level printing please?

Such that one could say "I would like this printed at level (my chosen number) print please?" and that is defined in a standard somewhere.

This standard relating to the technology, not related to any perceived artistic quality of the artwork.

Does the level number influence the way the PDF document needs to be exported?

William

 

[RichardMH]

The printer labs around here want jpegs rather than PDF. There appears to be no standard and different labs have different options. The lab nearest me offers 2 or 3 photo papers and I think 2 art papers. You really need to communicate with your printing lab. (Especially for big prints on art paper.) And some images print better on some papers. Home printers can be professional quality (but usually smaller size). Department stores tend to be the lower quality.

[thomaso]

58 minutes ago, William Overington said:

So is there some classification scale for hardcopy output please, such as Level (low nuber) for the home printer to Level (high number) for the highest quality art gallery level printing please?

There is no linear or layered hierarchy between the possible output technologies or qualities. The closest numerical matrix is the price. But it doesn't work as a hierarchical order for those that represent similar costs for different technologies. Print on watercolor-paper vs. print on acrylic or alu-dibond … who is first? There are too many various aspects and too different tastes for a simply numerical classification system.

And what would be the advantage of using numbers, not words?