Ensuring Print-Ready Graphics with Affinity Designer on iPad: A DPI Deep Dive

For designers transitioning to Affinity Designer on iPad, ensuring that your artwork meets the required print quality standards is crucial, especially when it comes to image DPI (dots per inch). This article addresses the common challenges faced when preparing designs for professional printing using Affinity Designer on iPad, focusing on achieving the correct raster image DPI for optimal press quality.

The Importance of DPI for Print Quality

DPI, or dots per inch, is a crucial factor determining the quality of printed images. A higher DPI means more detail and sharpness, while a lower DPI can result in pixelation and a blurry final product. For professional printing, a standard resolution of 300 DPI is generally recommended to achieve crisp and clear results, particularly for flyers and marketing materials. Understanding DPI is the first step towards mastering print output from Affinity Designer.

The Initial Challenge: Checking Image DPI in Affinity Designer on iPad

One user, "SharkyAfsar," highlighted a common concern in the Affinity Designer forums: the inability to directly check placed image DPI within the Affinity Designer iPad app. This limitation can be a significant hurdle when incorporating raster images into designs intended for print.

Workaround 1: Document Resize for Overall DPI

While you can’t check individual image DPI, you can check and set the document's DPI. As suggested by Callum from the Affinity team, navigating to Document > Resize in the bottom menu allows you to view and adjust the overall document DPI. This ensures your entire project is set to the correct resolution before adding any images.

The Core Problem: Scaling and Rasterization

The core issue arises when scaling images within a design. Resizing raster images without maintaining a sufficient DPI can lead to unwanted pixelation in the final print. The user specifically needed to ensure images were rasterized at 300 DPI after scaling to avoid print quality issues.

Workaround 2: Leveraging Affinity Photo for DPI Adjustment

Since Affinity Designer on iPad lacked a direct DPI checking feature at the time of the forum discussion (April 2019), a practical workaround involves using Affinity Photo for iPad.

Here’s the suggested workflow:

1. Copy the Image: Copy the image from your Affinity Designer project.
2. Paste into Affinity Photo: Paste the image into a new document in Affinity Photo.
3. Adjust DPI: Use Affinity Photo's resizing tools (as demonstrated in this Vimeo tutorial) to adjust the DPI to 300 without resizing the image dimensions.
4. Save or Copy Back: Save the modified image or copy it back into your Affinity Designer project.

This method allows you to ensure that each individual image meets the required DPI before incorporating it into your final design.

Workaround 3: Exporting to PDF and Checking in Illustrator

Another workaround suggested involved exporting the design as a PDF file and then checking the image DPI within Adobe Illustrator. This method relies on Affinity Designer's PDF export settings to maintain or convert images to the desired resolution. Specifically, choose PDF export options configured for press quality and specify a 300 DPI output.

Key Considerations for Downsampling

It's crucial to understand that downsampling (reducing the DPI of high-resolution images) works effectively but upsampling (increasing the DPI of low-resolution images) can be problematic. While you can downsample images above 300-450 DPI during PDF export, increasing the DPI of a 72 DPI image to 300 DPI without significantly reducing its size often leads to unsatisfactory results.

Increasing DPI Without Resizing: Smart Resampling

To effectively increase the DPI of a low-resolution image, you need to use a resampling technique. As demonstrated in this video, Affinity Photo on iPad provides options for resampling images without resizing them. This allows you to increase the DPI while attempting to preserve image quality.

PDF Export Settings: Your Final Line of Defense

Even without directly checking image DPI within Affinity Designer on iPad, the PDF export settings offer a crucial level of control. Utilize the PDF export options to rasterize images to a specific DPI (e.g., 300 DPI) during the export process.

Export Settings Breakdown:

• PDF for Print: Choose the "PDF for Print" preset to ensure the document adheres to printing standards.
• Raster DPI: Set the raster DPI to 300 to ensure all rasterized elements meet the minimum requirement.
• Downsampling: Configure downsampling options to automatically reduce the DPI of images exceeding a certain threshold (e.g., downsample images above 450 DPI to 300 DPI).

Key Takeaways for Print-Ready Designs

• Document DPI: Set your document DPI to 300 DPI at the beginning of your project (Document > Resize).
• Affinity Photo for Image Prep: Use Affinity Photo to pre-process images, ensuring they have a DPI of 300 before placing them in your Affinity Designer document.
• PDF Export Settings: Carefully configure PDF export settings to rasterize images and downsample where appropriate.
• Understand Upsampling Limitations: Be aware that increasing the DPI of low-resolution images without careful resampling techniques is unlikely to produce high-quality results.

Future Improvements

While the discussed workarounds provide solutions, the Affinity team acknowledged the need for a feature to directly inspect and manage image DPI within Affinity Designer on iPad in the future. Keeping an eye on Affinity Designer updates is important as improvements and new features will be rolled out.

Conclusion

Preparing print-ready designs in Affinity Designer on iPad requires a clear understanding of DPI and how to manage it effectively. By combining smart workarounds, leveraging Affinity Photo, and carefully configuring PDF export settings, you can confidently create high-quality designs that meet the demanding standards of professional printing.