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At what DPI does Affinity export SVGs?


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I am using Affinity to create a file that will be used by a laser cutting machine. The vendor needs to know the DPI of the SVG file. I understand that different apps may export SVGs at different DPIs, and while they know the standards for Illustrator and Inkscape, they don't know what DPI Affinity uses.

 

I see some SVG export settings related to DPI of raster images, but I don't think that's what I want. This is an important and time-sensitive job so i want to make sure I get it right the first time.

 

Any help is much appreciated. Thanks!

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I am using Affinity to create a file that will be used by a laser cutting machine. The vendor needs to know the DPI of the SVG file. I understand that different apps may export SVGs at different DPIs, and while they know the standards for Illustrator and Inkscape, they don't know what DPI Affinity uses.

 

I see some SVG export settings related to DPI of raster images, but I don't think that's what I want. This is an important and time-sensitive job so i want to make sure I get it right the first time.

 

Any help is much appreciated. Thanks!

 

Well, if it's a vector file, as in SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) it doesn't have any dpi. That's the point of a vector file, no dots!

 

If the file includes bitmap graphics in it, well that will depend on the graphics or on what you set when you export. When you export you can choose.

 

It is of course, no use selecting 300 dpi for a bitmap that is only 72dpi to start with. It will still be 72 dpi.

 

If the image is a vector drawing, just send it as it is. 

Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions.

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"When you upload your SVG file to The Game Crafter, our software will ask you how many dots per inch (or DPI) are defined by the program you used. "

 

​That's really weird, needing dots per inch settings for a vector file that doesn't use dots or inches to define graphics.. Still,  . . .

 

If you get desperate, install Inkscape (which is free), load your Affinity SVG into that and set it as stated

 

"go into Edit > Preferences and select "Tools". There, select "Geometric bounding box" rather than the default of "Visual bounding box"

 

Not ideal I know but I often had to do translation things like that with software to get things output for litho printing. I'm a bit surprised the laser cutting company doesn't "filter" everything first, if it's a known issue.

 

I would certainly be interested in how this ends up, so please let us know how you get on.

Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions.

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See the guidelines here: http://help.thegamecrafter.com/article/201-custom-punchouts- particularly the 'Notes About SVG' section.

 

Those guidelines are out of date. They refer to Inkscape using the old SVG standard of 90 DPI, but when Inkscape version 0.91 was replaced by version 0.92 at the beginning of this year they changed it to 96 DPI to match the current CSS standard.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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Those guidelines are out of date. They refer to Inkscape using the old SVG standard of 90 DPI, but when Inkscape version 0.91 was replaced by version 0.92 at the beginning of this year they changed it to 96 DPI to match the current CSS standard.

 

How do you know THAT  :huh:

Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions.

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Those guidelines are out of date. They refer to Inkscape using the old SVG standard of 90 DPI, but when Inkscape version 0.91 was replaced by version 0.92 at the beginning of this year they changed it to 96 DPI to match the current CSS standard.

 

Do you know if Affinity uses 96 now as well?

 

This is becoming a bit more complex than I'd expected.

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Those guidelines are out of date. They refer to Inkscape using the old SVG standard of 90 DPI, but when Inkscape version 0.91 was replaced by version 0.92 at the beginning of this year they changed it to 96 DPI to match the current CSS standard.

 

 

How do you know THAT  :huh:

 

 

I'm seriously impressed  :)

 

I'm afraid there's nothing really mysterious or seriously impressive about it! There was a thread some time ago where someone was complaining about SVG exports showing different dimensions when opened in Inkscape, and the 90 DPI thing was mentioned at the time. When I went to download Inkscape 0.92 three or four months ago, one of the changes mentioned prominently on the Inkscape site was the switch to 96 DPI.

 

Do you know if Affinity uses 96 now as well?

 

This is becoming a bit more complex than I'd expected.

 

I'm not sure offhand whether Affinity consistently uses 96 DPI or 72 DPI, or whether it varies according to the document type. Try it and see!

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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I just tried to export an SVG file from Xara Designer and it gives you an option to set the "Reasterization resolution (dpi)*" to pretty much what you want. Quite a few options.

 

It did say though "*For effects not supported by SVG". So it would not matter for a line document made of vector shapes.

 

I looked at the file it produced in a text editor and there is actually no mention of "dpi" even with a bitmap included in the file so I guess it is the program itself "Xara" in this case, outputting the bitmap at different "sizes" depending on the dpi you set ?

 

 

For the case of Caconym and your laser cutter, if you are just outputting a vector outline for cutting, I'm sure it won't actually matter because the vector line is an "effect supported by SVG"). So tell them what you want, like 96 dpi which seems pretty standard.

 

Maybe Serif can throw a bit more light on what Designer does with the dpi resolution.

 

Because there is no mention of dpi in the SVG file I can't "hack" it to see.

Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions.

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Thanks for the help everyone. Thus far I have made progress but come up with another issue which may or may not be Affinity-specific.

 

I received a response from Serif today telling me to simply enter in the DPI I wanted it to export as in 'Use DPI' field of the 'More' export options menu.

 

I've exported and uploaded SVGs with every different export option changed and I end up with the following result (for example):

 

2jwtcn.png

 

23h2l9x.png

 

zoeia.png

 

Giving the website a number matching the export DPI option selected in Affinity still results in the above mismatched proof. Disabling the 'Set viewBox' option made things better, but something is still off.

 

Of course this could be an issue with the Game Crafter website as easily as with Affinity (as I've even tried an SVG exported from a friend's copy of Illustrator with similar problems). And I do have a support ticket in with them.

 

But I guess let me know if anything I've posted here gives any of you any more ideas.

 

Thanks again.

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It seems to be more to do with the your Game Crafter lot than anything else.

 

As I said before, the dpi setting only should only affect bitmaps inside the SVG file, not the vector parts.

 

This is the information in a simple SVG file at different SVG dpi settings. I set a 25 mm square vector box on an A4 page and output it at 300 dpi, 150 dpi and 96 dpi SVG settings. There is no other sizing information in the file, just the other graphic properties, colour, stroke, etc which I did not include.

 

300 dpi
width="595.277pt" height="841.891pt" viewBox="0 0 595.277 841.891">  (THE A4 PAGE SIZE)
<path d="M 155.116,743.523 L 155.116,672.652 L 225.983,672.652 L 225.983,743.523 L 155.116,743.523 Z"  (THE GRAPHICS SIZE)
 
150 dpi
width="595.277pt" height="841.891pt" viewBox="0 0 595.277 841.891">
<path d="M 155.116,743.523 L 155.116,672.652 L 225.983,672.652 L 225.983,743.523 L 155.116,743.523 Z"
 
96 dpi
width="595.277pt" height="841.891pt" viewBox="0 0 595.277 841.891">
<path d="M 155.116,743.523 L 155.116,672.652 L 225.983,672.652 L 225.983,743.523 L 155.116,743.523 Z"
 
As you see, there is no difference to the size information at all, no matter what dpi I set. The files is identical in every way, no mention of dpi.
 
Here I doubled the size of the graphic to 50 mm and moved it a bit.
 
150dpi
 width="595.277pt" height="841.891pt" viewBox="0 0 595.277 841.891">
<path d="M 277.484,694.358 L 277.484,552.618 L 419.216,552.618 L 419.216,694.358 L 277.484,694.358 Z"
 
If I include a bitmap, the file size changes dramatically between 96 dpi and 300 dpi, with lots more information in the 300 dpi raster bit. Now, I can understand that an SVG might need to know what resolution the bitmap was. But not the vector.

Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions.

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Thinking about that. 

 

Do you set your page size to match the Laser Cutter "page" with the cuts you draw at 100% ? I noticed that in your screengrab the page size was set to 3.25 inches by 5.5 inches. Thats an odd size ? In each case of my SVG files the paper size was A4 which is shown in the actual page dimensions in the file.

 

Maybe the cutter can't cope with that?

 

Just a thought. I don't have them that often and wanted to share ;)

Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions.

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