Page Dimensions

[amitco77]

Hello all !

I wish to create a photo album with specific dimensions for every page: 20cm Height x 40cm Width and 300dpi (my photo store creates digital albums by this diemensions). then, I will add some of my own photos on every page, add some text, decorations and other stuff...

I'm using Photo & Graphic Designer 8 - How to do this ?

Thanks,
Amit

[pauland]

Welcome to TG.

Can you give a link to the photo store that you are using?

20cm is 7.874 inches, so at 300dpi that would be 2362 pixels ( 40cm 4724 pixels ).

I'm assuming that you upload each page seperately, so you could set the page size in CM and export at 300DPI.

I'd like to visit the photo store site though, because I'd expect them to tell you exactly the page pixel size for you to fill it.

[amitco77]

Hi pauland,

thanks for your reply,
The store I mentioned is a local photo development store located in my town, it has no website.
Using the customer's photos, they design and sell printed photo-albums (with hard cover) in a variety of sizes.
Instead of using their design I want to use Xara Photo & Graphic Desinger to create the album pages with my photos,
and then deliver them all the pages so they can print the album.
So I asked for the exact diemsions of every page of the album I was interested in and that's what they told me: 40cmX20cm, 300dpi.

Amit

[pauland]

So in pixels that's 4724x2362.

That's your page size.

[ you can equally set it to be 40cm x 20cm, then export the page at 300DPI. You may find this more comfortable when thinking of a physical page dimension/position.

It might be an idea to have a physical piece of paper and of the correct page size and work out any placement/margins, etc using that since it's probably easier to guage a physical size that way than on-screen.]

[gwpriester]

Paul - If the output resolution is 300dpi then as Xara's (Windows) screen resolution is 96dpi, would not the page size be .32% of the image size? When the page is exported at 300dpi it will be the pixel dimensions requested.

For example, my stereogram images for publication are 10" x 8" @ 300dpi. My page size in Xara is 960 x 768 but exports at 300dpi to 3000 x 2400 pixels or 10 x 8. My images on the page are created at 300dpi.

I ran into this problem when I was trying to figure out what size to make my images for the iPad apps I created until I stopped thinking in resolution and started thinking in terms of actual pixel dimensions.

It makes my head hurt thinking about it.

[pauland]

The screen resolution is largely irrelevant in this case, what counts is supplying an image with the correct pixel dimensions for the printed page. The final pixel resolution is clear and I've suggested that CM dimension or pixel dimensions will work.

If you have vectors on a low resolution page - 970x768 - I guess Xara is happily up-scaling the vector and not losing any resolution. If you have low-resolution bitmaps on your 970x768 page, say a 400x400 bitmap dragged onto the page, it will pixellate when you upscale to 3000x2400. If however you drag a 4000x4000 pixel bitmap onto your 970x768 page and then scale it down, then I guess Xara will be fine rescaling that bitmap for a higher resolution without pixellating it.

If you can explain how you form the page for your 3D stereograms, the mystery will be solved!

Paul

[gwpriester]

Paul - I said

My images on the page are created at 300dpi.

The image exports to 3000 x 2400 pixels. The resolution is in actuality 300dpi when scaled down to the print size.

My page size is 960 x 768 pixels. But the images I am working with are 300dpi.

[pauland]

My point is that because the images that you are working with are at high resolution and you scale them down to fit on a low-resolution page, Xara is using the original 300DPI image when creating the 3000x2400 pixel output, not the small image visible on your 960x768 page.

You say that the original images that you use on the Xara page are 300DPI, but I bet they are way bigger in pixel dimensions than the Xara page size that you are working with.

Why have you chosen 960x768 as the pixel dimensions of the page? In your case, Gary, the small page size doesn't matter because the images you drop onto it are far bigger than the page size. The danger is that anyone else working at that page size could drop an image on there - 300DPI but only two inches square (600px x 600px). When they scale that page up to 3000x2400 they will get pixellation.

[pauland]

As an example. I make a page that's 960x768. I have three images - all 300DPI - (a) is a ten inch square ( 3000x3000 ), (b) is a two inch square (600x600) and (C) is one inch square ( 300x300). I drag them into Xara and resize them to be 250 pixel squares - all three exactly the same size on screen. They will all look OK.

If I then export the page at 3000X2400, (a) will look great, (b) pixellated and (c) highly pixellated. If I had Xara to hand I'd make an example.

[Sammy]

Amit
Hi. Welcome to Talkgraphics.

With regards to your post it seems that your friendly photo shop has asked you to export your completed image at a high resolution of 300dpi.

Not sure how much you have used Xara but to do what you are asking, just do the following :

Setting the Page Size

1) Click on File, Page Options.
2) In the Options Menu click on the down arrow in the Page Size box and select Custom. Set the width and height to your specs. eg 40cm x 20cm.
3) Select Portrait or Landscape. In your case it would be Landscape.
4) Click OK.

That is it. Now your page size has been set. You can start importing your photos to the page and start designing the page as you like.

Once you have finished preparing your pages, Export the page as jpeg.

Exporting the Page as Jpeg


1) Click File, Export Jpeg.
2) In the Export File window enter your file name and then click the Settings button.
3) In the JPEG Export Bitmap Options window you'll see several tabs
- Select True Colour in the Pallete Options Tab
- In the Bitmap Size tab set the DPI to 300 and select Page in the Area To Save section.
- In the Options Tab make sure the Jpeg quality is set to 100
4) Then click Export.

Your page will now be saved as a Jpeg Image at 300dpi. The file size will be quite big.

One thing to keep in mind is that with the page size set at 40cmx20cm, it will need quite a few photos to fill the page. Depending on the photo resolution you computer will need a lot of memory to manipulate the pictures.


Hope this helps.

Have fun

Sammy