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Feedback/recommendation for workflow and print house


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I am completely new to Publisher, and would appreciate advice on some basic questions. Last year I made my first photobook using one of the online services, and I was not happy with the online process, the overall sharpness and quality of the final product. Therefore, I got Publisher, in order to have more control of the design. The questions are:
(1) Is there a tutorial specifically for creating photobooks ?
(2) Any recommendation for a print house in US ( West Coast ) ?
(3) Some print houses publish recommendations for print-ready PDFs, like:
     with details such as “trim line” , “bleed” , “inset for margins”.
     I am not sure how would I translate these into Publisher options ?
(4) My workflow is:
     (a) Scan a slide.
     (b) Post-proceesing in Affinity Photo ( sharpening, etc… )
     (c) Layout in Publisher
 
     In (a), I scan at full resolution ( 400dpi ), and save as TIFF, for example 3840 x 5760 pixels.
     In (b), for image resizing, I select File/Export/JPEG/“Bilinear”/Quality=100, and new size, for example 1920 x 2880.
     In (c), I arrange JPGs into book layout.
 
     Any comments/suggestons/recommendations on the above workflow ? 
 
(5) So in Publisher, I can also do resizing by manually stretching the TIFF. But this manual resizing does not specify type of resampling, so I am thinking that the resampling in (b) is of better quality - is this correct ?
 
(6) In (b), I start with an original image at convenient size ( 3840 x 5760 ), so resampling at factors 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 produces images at target sizes which are exactly proportional:
3840 x 5760 / 2.0 1920 x 2880
3840 x 5760 / 3.0 1280 x 1920
…etc... 
So if in Publisher, I do manual resizing, the resizing factor would most likely include a fractional part, say 2.17. The question is: does resizing by an integer factor ( 2x ) produce better ( meaning sharper ) image compared to resizing by a real factor ( 2.17x ) ?
 
 
Sorry for such a basic questions, and thanks for all comments and feedback,
 
regards,
mshumski
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Hi Mshumski,

Welcome to the forums :)

1. We don't have any tutorials for creating photobooks I'm afrid.

2. We don't have any recommended print houses as we are based in Nottingham in the UK.

3. If you go to File > Document setup you will find the option to add bleed to your document. If you go to File > Spread setup you will find the option to add margins.

4. In regards to workflow all I would say is that this can be done entirely in Publisher using the studio link feature.

5. In Photo you are able to specify resampling methods so It might be better quality depending on use case.

6. It will create a sharper image as the pixels in most cases are staying as whole numbers. When you start adding decimal numbers into the mix you could end up with a distorted image

Please tag me using @ in your reply so I can be sure to respond ASAP.

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11 hours ago, mshumski said:

Sorry for such a basic questions ...

They are not as basic as you might think. But that isn't the reason for this reply. It is instead to complement you on how much relevant info you included in your post & how clearly & concisely it was presented. This is even more remarkable since it is your first post here.

Well done!  thumbup1.gif

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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13 hours ago, mshumski said:
(4) My workflow is:  (...)
     In (b), for image resizing, I select File/Export/JPEG/“Bilinear”/Quality=100, and new size, for example 1920 x 2880.
     In (c), I arrange JPGs into book layout.
     Any comments/suggestons/recommendations on the above workflow ? 

4b: the additional image quality between 85 – 100% is very little compared to the increase of file size (about + 100%). – Have a look at some comparisons of compression versus file size; just scroll down to an image of your interest and hover over the different compression rates to visually compare details / loss and according file size simultaneously:    http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/jpeg-quality

4c: why not using the TIF files for the layout? There is no real need for an additional file (JPG) between input (TIF) and output (PDF).
 

13 hours ago, mshumski said:

(5) So in Publisher, I can also do resizing by manually stretching the TIFF. But this manual resizing does not specify type of resampling, so I am thinking that the resampling in (b) is of better quality - is this correct ?

5: I guess it is a misunderstanding. The resampling what you see on page in layout view can't be influenced, true. But that is a preview only. The relevant resampling happens on export and can be selected in the Export options > "More" > ...

977532853_exportoptionsdownsampling.jpg.478fc00aba811804c61c45859139bf83.jpg

 

13 hours ago, mshumski said:
(6) (...) does resizing by an integer factor ( 2x ) produce better ( meaning sharper ) image compared to resizing by a real factor ( 2.17x ) ?

Concerning the number of pixels before and after resampling I agree and think scaling by 50%, 25% scaling would give a more clear result than 53% or 17% for instance. Imagine that scaling forces a specific number of pixels beeing merged to a new number of pixels. But I doubt that it would become visible when scaling for instance from 5000 px down to 2500 compared to 2517 px.

 

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

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