Resizing documents in Affinity Designer via the Photo persona

[Niko Steensels]

HI,

I'm hoping to find some advise on how to proceed with a following question I have. I have just finished placing all the photos in Picture frames in a photo book that I'm making in Affinity Publisher. The next step I'm trying to do, is to clean up, sharpen and increase the dpi for each individual picture with the aim of a better result when printing these photos.

The clean up and the sharpening works as expected in the photo persona, but for some reason, I'm not able to select "resize document" when trying to increase the DPI of each picture.

Is there a work around for this, or can I only do this resizing in Affinity Photo only but not in photo persona in Publisher?

 

Niko

[NotMyFault]

Affinity Apps provide resize only for documents (including all layers), not for specific layers only.

you can use either document->resize or export.

of course, you can use the move tool to change layer size, but there is no choice of resample method, always uses bilinear which creates softness.

typically you need to upscale images individually (one image as file).

you can place Affinity documents instead of e.g. jpeg images, but be aware of some disadvantages (e.g. unfixed bugs when dealing with transparent areas inside tose placed files)

[Niko Steensels]

Thanks for the answer. Looks like I took the wrong work flow here by adding the pictures first to my pages and then trying to edit them.  

Now I need to find a way to do this in a more or less automated way as I will have to readjust close to a 1000 photos... 

[NotMyFault]

The main questions is why you want or need to increase DPI.

Updscaling images (increasing DPI while keeping the physical size) should be avoided unless absolutely required, it is no easy task.

typically digital images have 12-24 Mpix today, and having multiple images on one page gives plenty of resolution for print purposes.

Which DPI do you plan to achieve?

which size (pixel count x and y), which physical size (cm) are you planning for single images or full pages?
 

[NotMyFault]

In most cases you can cheat and simply add a highpss filter and unsharp mask instead of upscaling.

always check the results using 100% or 200% zoom level, and view mode „pixel“. Any other zoom level or view mode gives misleading rendering.

 

[Niko Steensels]

48 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

The main questions is why you want or need to increase DPI.

Updscaling images (increasing DPI while keeping the physical size) should be avoided unless absolutely required, it is no easy task.

typically digital images have 12-24 Mpix today, and having multiple images on one page gives plenty of resolution for print purposes.

Which DPI do you plan to achieve?

which size (pixel count x and y), which physical size (cm) are you planning for single images or full pages?
 

The reason for increasing the DPI is to make sure that the quality of the pictures when printed, matches to what I see on screen. I did a test print and was concerned that the sharpness of the pictures were not on the same level as on screen. I'm therefore trying to see if

• increasing DPI of the individual pictures will help, as I'm not sure if they suffer somewhat after resizing them in the picture frames.
• Increasing DPI of the original pictures 
• adding a high pass filter 
• increase the DPI when exporting 

is the way forward. 

My aim is to have at least 300dpi but not sure if this is sufficient if I have zoomed in on pictures. 

Note that this is the first time I'm using publisher for printing, so I'm still figuring out what the best way forward is.

[thomaso]

41 minutes ago, Niko Steensels said:

My aim is to have at least 300dpi but not sure if this is sufficient if I have zoomed in on pictures. 

I wonder if you confuse DPI of an image file with its pixel dimensions ('Megapixels'). Just increasing the DPI when saving an image file doesn't actually increase the image but rather may cause just a smaller print size for instance (because of higher density of 'dots'/pixels caused by the higher DPI value).

3 hours ago, Niko Steensels said:

I will have to readjust close to a 1000 photos... 

Are they linked or embedded? – If they are linked you can press the "Edit image" button in the Context Toolbar, this will open the image in a new tab in APub and let you modify its document size and resolution. Before closing the separate tab in APub you need to save your changes (and thus overwrite the linked file on disk).

However, for 1000 files changing the size individually is a quite cumbersome workflow – even if it would be just 1 click per image.

Instead you could upscale their original files on disk with a macro (batch), then just (auto-)update the modified resources in APub. If the images are currently embedded in .afpub you can select all in the Resource Manager and press the "Make Linked…" button.

55 minutes ago, Niko Steensels said:

• increase the DPI when exporting 

There might be a workaround: Affinity does resampling image resources on export under certain circumstances. For instance if they are vector cropped (with a nested vector mask) or possibly if they are forced to become rasterized on export or if they get exported with a certain PDF version and format (I can't remember the version right now but its mentioned in at least one forums thread).

Another way to force rasterization on export is activating this in the export options. Alternatively could add a feature that causes rasterization but wouldn't influence the visual layout (e.g. a very subtle adjustment or filter, since all filters and adjustments force rasterization on export).

Just try some exports with a sample page with the PDF export resolution set to the desired value above the common 300 DPI and the option "Downsample images Above: … DPI" to a sufficiently high (!) value.

13 hours ago, Niko Steensels said:

The clean up and the sharpening works as expected in the photo persona, but for some reason, I'm not able to select "resize document" when trying to increase the DPI of each picture.

Just in case: Sharpening should be done after rescaling, not before.

[NotMyFault]

4 hours ago, Niko Steensels said:

The reason for increasing the DPI is to make sure that the quality of the pictures when printed, matches to what I see on screen. I did a test print and was concerned that the sharpness of the pictures were not on the same level as on screen. I'm therefore trying to see if

The resolution and sharpness will match if the process is done correctly. Increasing DPI will not lead to better print results, unless something got wrong at the later steps of exporting, processing of printout in print driver or by print device.

It strongly depends on what type of print device you are using and how do you print it (which driver and driver settings are used),

Most important are export settings (assuming you create a PDF).

Could you create an excerpt of 1-2 pages, and if required replace sensitive images by other example images of same size / color format / similar content and upload it?
can you provide the requested information and  a screenshot of all export UI settings (you may need to scroll or expand UI elements)?

Do you have a scan or photo from the printout?

Laser, inkjet, Photobook from lab, …?

[Niko Steensels]

I will provide you tomorrow with the requested excerpts and print outs, but I can already provide you with my export settings for a PDF. For now I'm just test printing it on a laser printer.

Tomorrow i can also give some more information on the printer.

 

 

[Niko Steensels]

7 hours ago, thomaso said:

I wonder if you confuse DPI of an image file with its pixel dimensions ('Megapixels'). Just increasing the DPI when saving an image file doesn't actually increase the image but rather may cause just a smaller print size for instance (because of higher density of 'dots'/pixels caused by the higher DPI value).

To be honest, I'm rather new to the publishing so still on a steep learning curve, so it could be very much that I'm not using the correct terms, or maybe looking into the wrong direction

7 hours ago, thomaso said:

Are they linked or embedded? – If they are linked you can press the "Edit image" button in the Context Toolbar, this will open the image in a new tab in APub and let you modify its document size and resolution. Before closing the separate tab in APub you need to save your changes (and thus overwrite the linked file on disk).

Fortunately I have them all linked

7 hours ago, thomaso said:

 

There might be a workaround: Affinity does resampling image resources on export under certain circumstances. For instance if they are vector cropped (with a nested vector mask) or possibly if they are forced to become rasterized on export or if they get exported with a certain PDF version and format (I can't remember the version right now but its mentioned in at least one forums thread).

I

7 hours ago, thomaso said:

Another way to force rasterization on export is activating this in the export options. Alternatively could add a feature that causes rasterization but wouldn't influence the visual layout (e.g. a very subtle adjustment or filter, since all filters and adjustments force rasterization on export).

Just try some exports with a sample page with the PDF export resolution set to the desired value above the common 300 DPI and the option "Downsample images Above: … DPI" to a sufficiently high (!) value.

See my export settings in my previous post. Any advise will be appreciated.

 

[Niko Steensels]

I have added  an example of what I'm seeing, in afpub, export pdf and a pdf scan after I printed it.

test 300dpi.pdf test.afpub 20250403143305.pdf

[NotMyFault]

Thanks for the files. The exported PDF looks fine, the scan looks horribly. The loss of quality is most probably caused by the capabilities of the LaserPrinter or driver settings when printing. There is no need to upscale images, all are fine in exported PDF.

[Niko Steensels]

9 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

Thanks for the files. The exported PDF looks fine, the scan looks horribly. The loss of quality is most probably caused by the capabilities of the LaserPrinter or driver settings when printing. There is no need to upscale images, all are fine in exported PDF.

That was indeed my first suspicion too that it could be related to the printer, but as it is the first time I'm printing something made in Affinity Publisher, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't overlooking something.

BAckground is that I have used this printer before to print out artworks made in Procreate and there the prints closely reflected to what I saw on screen.  The export files from Procreate were PNG files and not PDFs but were also using the CYMK color range. 

Anyway, Many thanks for your help and insights.  I will look into my printer settings to see what I can do to improve the quality.