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BUG: Printing Directly from Publisher = Horrible Resolution


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Is the horrible resolution from placed/imported images? Or is it overall bad?

Placed images are placed at lower resolution if they are linked so that may be the problem.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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10 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Placed images are placed at lower resolution if they are linked so that may be the problem.

Are you sure about that? It's certainly not true on Windows, from an experiment I just did.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
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I have tried every way I know to bring an image into Affinity Publisher. I have used place image from the side toolbar, place from the menu bar, and replace image from the top toolbar. I have copied and pasted. Nothing seems to work. Do I have to manually change the image to where it is not a linked image? That doesn't seem right and would make all of my files large. It will export to pdf and show full resolution, but it is downgrading the resolution when it exports to print. 

I'm coming from InDesign and have not had this issue before. 

Edited by caseyagray
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To be clear: I think this is a bug.

My comment was pure speculation about a possible cause, what we see on the screen is not what is seen by printer drivers.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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2 hours ago, caseyagray said:

I have to export to a .pdf in order to get the same quality I see in the program. When I print directly from Affinity Publisher the quality is horrible.

Unfortunately the document resolution setting influences the output resolution on print (not on export). So to get higher resolution printed you need the workaround to increase document resolution. For no reason in my opinion, so I agree Old Bruce that sounds like a bug.

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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On 6/20/2019 at 4:48 PM, caseyagray said:

I have to export to a .pdf in order to get the same quality I see in the program. When I print directly from Affinity Publisher the quality is horrible. Why do I have to export in order to print? That is an additional step that I would like for you to eliminate...

Colors are impure too.

Advertising designer - Austria —  Photo - Publisher - Designer — CS6 d&wP — Mac Pro 5,1 (4,1 2009) 48GB 2x X5690 - RX580 - 970EVO - OS X 10.14.6 - NEC2690wuxi2 - CD20"—  iPad Pro 12.9" gen1 128 GB - Pencil

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What is the rasterization DPI set to in print options? I've tested inserting a few images at native DPI on a 300DPI document and the quality on print is similar to printing from a PDF I've exported.

Serif Europe Ltd. - www.serif.com

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On 7/3/2019 at 7:10 PM, caseyagray said:

I was asking about printing directly from Affinity Publisher. There are no rasterization DPI settings unless you first export to .PDF. I want to avoid exporting to .pdf and print directly.

Actually there are, in the print dialogue box:   Also may I ask what is the resolution of your placed image?  What is the resolution defined in Document setup?  I print directly from Publisher on win 10.  Always have very pleasing results with all images.  So something is amiss somewhere and I am at this point wondering whether there might be something in the workflow.

 

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Microsoft - Like entering your home and opening the stainless steel kitchen door, with a Popup: 'Do you really want to open this door'? Then looking for the dishwasher and finding it stored in the living room where you have to download a water supply from the app store, then you have to buy microsoft compliant soap, remove the carpet only to be told that it is glued to the floor.. Don't forget to make multiple copies of your front door key and post them to all who demand access to all the doors inside your home including the windows and outside shed.

Apple - Like entering your home and opening the oak framed Kitchen door and finding the dishwasher right in front you ready to be switched on, soap supplied, and water that comes through a water softener.  Ah the front door key is yours and it only needs to open the front door.

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On 6/24/2019 at 5:15 PM, Johannes said:

Colors are impure too.

If you wish to expand upon this point in more detail I may be able to help.

Microsoft - Like entering your home and opening the stainless steel kitchen door, with a Popup: 'Do you really want to open this door'? Then looking for the dishwasher and finding it stored in the living room where you have to download a water supply from the app store, then you have to buy microsoft compliant soap, remove the carpet only to be told that it is glued to the floor.. Don't forget to make multiple copies of your front door key and post them to all who demand access to all the doors inside your home including the windows and outside shed.

Apple - Like entering your home and opening the oak framed Kitchen door and finding the dishwasher right in front you ready to be switched on, soap supplied, and water that comes through a water softener.  Ah the front door key is yours and it only needs to open the front door.

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That is fascinating, Chris. On Mac, the only adjustment I can make is to the print quality. I can adjust it to Best, but that does nothing. However, I looked into File: Document Setup and found the ability to change the DPI of the document. It was set to 72?!?! How does that make sense? Adjusting it corrected the horrible print resolution. Thanks for the insight! :) 

The colour can be adjusted in Document Setup as well. 

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1 hour ago, caseyagray said:

It was set to 72?!?! How does that make sense?

Just maybe when you created the document it was set to what you see here?  This explains the 72ppi.

Capture.JPG.cd8fb8170ba4ab76f856396404c0008e.JPG

Microsoft - Like entering your home and opening the stainless steel kitchen door, with a Popup: 'Do you really want to open this door'? Then looking for the dishwasher and finding it stored in the living room where you have to download a water supply from the app store, then you have to buy microsoft compliant soap, remove the carpet only to be told that it is glued to the floor.. Don't forget to make multiple copies of your front door key and post them to all who demand access to all the doors inside your home including the windows and outside shed.

Apple - Like entering your home and opening the oak framed Kitchen door and finding the dishwasher right in front you ready to be switched on, soap supplied, and water that comes through a water softener.  Ah the front door key is yours and it only needs to open the front door.

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My default setting is 300, but this document that I edit and print weekly was imported from Indesign and started off at 72. I guess the program reads the resolution and tries to choose a DPI for you? If I were to create a new document from scratch every week this would not be a problem. Thanks for helping me understand what's happening. 

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I am not a printing newbie so I created the document as paper size A4 with 360dpi to avoid aliasing on my Epson 3880 with 1440x720 dpi.

Right now if I go to document settings, I even increased the document dpi to 720. NO change in print quality however.

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1 hour ago, gaduffl said:

I am not a printing newbie so I created the document as paper size A4 with 360dpi to avoid aliasing on my Epson 3880 with 1440x720 dpi.

Right now if I go to document settings, I even increased the document dpi to 720. NO change in print quality however.

Yes 360 is the optimal and best resolution for the epson 3880 as long as the original image has the pixels for it.  Changing the doc settings to 720  in publisher will not help, anything above 360 ppi is a complete waste of time since the printer driver will then just discard pixels if it can only print at 300 ppi. And this applies to even the epson 3880, above 360 is a waste of pixels.  I really need to ask the size of your original image in pixels and ppi as output from your camera.  Also you pointed to colours as being 'Impure' , please explain that point.  Which colours are involved.  A screen shot might be helpful, or even the original file and I will take a look at it for you.

Microsoft - Like entering your home and opening the stainless steel kitchen door, with a Popup: 'Do you really want to open this door'? Then looking for the dishwasher and finding it stored in the living room where you have to download a water supply from the app store, then you have to buy microsoft compliant soap, remove the carpet only to be told that it is glued to the floor.. Don't forget to make multiple copies of your front door key and post them to all who demand access to all the doors inside your home including the windows and outside shed.

Apple - Like entering your home and opening the oak framed Kitchen door and finding the dishwasher right in front you ready to be switched on, soap supplied, and water that comes through a water softener.  Ah the front door key is yours and it only needs to open the front door.

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My original image is 6000x4000px and was exported from lightroom with 360dpi as well. In my publisher project they are scaled down so the dpi values shown by Publisher are even higher.

As a side note: By choosing "finest detail" in the printer setting of the 3880, the driver switches to 720dpi mode, so it is not a complete waste. Printing with 720dpi output and "finest detail" on makes a difference, bute you need to have a trained eye...

Anyway, I would be happy if I would get a print result from publisher that would not make lines look like stairs...

The issue with the impure color was reported by Johannes, not me.

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14 hours ago, gaduffl said:

By choosing "finest detail" in the printer setting of the 3880, the driver switches to 720dpi mode, so it is not a complete waste

Hi there, no that 720 dpi is not the same as 720 in publisher.  360 pixels will be translated by the printer into however many dots per inch it can handle.  Not a single Professional or semi-professional or colour mangement person will ever send a 720 ppi image to a printer.  That 720 gives finer detail  --whoops I have to shoot and go sorry.................

 

Back again, was interupted.  Keeping it short, scour the internet for articles by colour management people, photographers semi and professional, you will never find a single one of these people placing images at any highr than 360 ppi, 360 is the optimum for any image if the image is already good quality that is.  DPI and PPI are utterly totally two different measurements and the DPI setting is Publsiher has nothing to do with the printer because Affinity have labelled it DPI instead of PPI.  The internet is filled with all this information so I have no need to re-write what is commonly known.

Microsoft - Like entering your home and opening the stainless steel kitchen door, with a Popup: 'Do you really want to open this door'? Then looking for the dishwasher and finding it stored in the living room where you have to download a water supply from the app store, then you have to buy microsoft compliant soap, remove the carpet only to be told that it is glued to the floor.. Don't forget to make multiple copies of your front door key and post them to all who demand access to all the doors inside your home including the windows and outside shed.

Apple - Like entering your home and opening the oak framed Kitchen door and finding the dishwasher right in front you ready to be switched on, soap supplied, and water that comes through a water softener.  Ah the front door key is yours and it only needs to open the front door.

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OK so there is no solution appearantly, so this is a BUG.

 

To Chris26: One question, have you actually tried the different settings and looked for a difference (and I do mean in Adobe Software, which is able to produce good print results)? I guess for most people, including "professionals" it does not make a difference. For the people that really pay attention to detail, it does!

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1 hour ago, gaduffl said:

To Chris26: One question, have you actually tried the different settings and looked for a difference (and I do mean in Adobe Software, which is able to produce good print results)? I guess for most people, including "professionals" it does not make a difference. For the people that really pay attention to detail, it does!

When I worked with Epson 3800 I spent countless moments and sheets of Hahnemuhle and Permajet paper looking for optimal prints for my images for a gallery.  Not only testing resolution between 300 and 360 as a matter of interest, but quality of paper and the resolution and white points of those papers.  A very basic concusion for you are the following points:

Assuming that you are working with a good image from raw in the first place, the variables involved are very much dependent upon the Type of Image, Black and white, soft tones, in your face contrast tones, shades, many colours or just a few colours, toned images, gentle gradations and so on.  My findings were this, for some of those images I printed at 240 PPI in order to increase the size of my image and when compared to 360 there was not one iota of difference unless I walked right up to the image and analysed a square inch of it.  300 or 360 often made no difference except when I viewed them with an 8x Loupe, (used to view negatives before printing in a darkroom).    People viewing photography stand Back from the image to view it, not up close with a Loupe.  Printing an image at 700 PPI no I have never ever done this . Mainly because I had enough training to see that this was useless.  Each image needs a different approach, some will respond better with 360ppi and with others no noticeable difference would warrant one to go back and add an extra 60 pixels to a 300 px img.  On a technical note ultimately the Printer driver will take those pixels and translate them into DPI, and yes a 720 dpi setting is better.  But having said that, a 600 dpi printer can print just as well as a 720 dpi printer, they are not all hard and fast variables.

What I am failing to understand is this,  Your original question - " When I print directly from Affinity Publisher the quality is horrible."  When this happens it is my experience that a colour managed workflow is usually the problem and it is my experience from another forum (a Photography forum) that so many people begin a new topic with this question and 90% of the time, they have missed something in their colour managed workflow.  The fact that your pdf came out as expected tells me that something must be wrong in the affinity setup, this narrows it down.  So maybe you could, as I asked earlier, give me that file and I will gladly take a look at it and print it also on my printer. :)

Microsoft - Like entering your home and opening the stainless steel kitchen door, with a Popup: 'Do you really want to open this door'? Then looking for the dishwasher and finding it stored in the living room where you have to download a water supply from the app store, then you have to buy microsoft compliant soap, remove the carpet only to be told that it is glued to the floor.. Don't forget to make multiple copies of your front door key and post them to all who demand access to all the doors inside your home including the windows and outside shed.

Apple - Like entering your home and opening the oak framed Kitchen door and finding the dishwasher right in front you ready to be switched on, soap supplied, and water that comes through a water softener.  Ah the front door key is yours and it only needs to open the front door.

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On 7/8/2019 at 10:18 PM, Chris26 said:

If you wish to expand upon this point in more detail I may be able to help.

I have an acceptable workaround now. Thanks.

Advertising designer - Austria —  Photo - Publisher - Designer — CS6 d&wP — Mac Pro 5,1 (4,1 2009) 48GB 2x X5690 - RX580 - 970EVO - OS X 10.14.6 - NEC2690wuxi2 - CD20"—  iPad Pro 12.9" gen1 128 GB - Pencil

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  • 4 months later...
  • 1 month later...

I am considering getting Affinity software - mostly due to Apple's Catalina crippling my 32 bit software, of which I had lots.

I would like to print some posters too, using my 3880 Epson A2+ printer at home. I also have a calibration setup for getting colour right.

But with Seriff's Affinity's Publisher program, I have noted that firstly some have problems with colour output quality, and also there appears to be no Publisher (from Affinity) based way of poster printing. ie.:  Make a large sized document in Affinity Publisher. Instruct the Affinity Publisher program to print the poster sized document with check placement lines printed. Then one can stick lots of sheets together easily using check placement lines. Thereby easily end up with a large single poster printed cheaply at home.

(cheap means possibly excluding the ink cost)

I am also wondering, how does Affinity Publisher handle photographic images? The way publisher programs are supposed to work, is that the publishing software shows a screen resolution view of the photograph, which is typically much smaller than the actual photographic image. This keeps the publisher program small. When one prints, the larger image is then extracted from its storage place, and the publishing program handles the amount of information it requires from the large photographic image so that the publishing program can then print at the user requested print resolution. Does Affinity Publishing work that way?

 

Thanks

MP

Edited by Melbourne Park
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