How to finish off a piece in procreate to send out for printing

[Coley]

Hey everyone, I have been at digital for a little over a year but mostly been putting things online and not doing many prints. Started out in photoshop, and when I wanted to print, I had only saved as a jpeg. I didn’t flatten or compress anything and to be honest, I don’t even know what that means really.

I switched to procreate and now I have an image I want to test print at 8x10. Current file is just under 20 mb as a procreate file. I worked at 300 dpi. 2400x3000 pixels . When I save it as a jpeg from procreate , it is only 473 kB.

I’m going to try sending the file to my laptop to save it as a jpeg from photoshop, it seems easier to adjust the size that I’m saving it at. (I tried sending it last night but it was being finicky, it just went through).

If anyone had any tips, I would appreciate it. Maybe I just need to understand what all this flattening and compressing is about

[Braxton]

@Coley You definitely want to save it out as a png file to get the best quality, jpeg is always compressed to some extent (which reduces file size but can look less sharp or introduce visual artifacts). The other thing to consider is the color profile, I think there's a recent thread about that for Procreate.

[Coley]

@Braxton thanks. I tried saving it as a png and the file size was much better!

I’ve seen the Color profile chats, I need to go back and look, tho I’m using rgb typically in procreate so maybe it’s all good. However this particular file is digital pencil so no color to worry about for this particular one

[Braxton]

@Coley glad I could help!

[burvantill]

This is what I know (not much but i hope it helps):
Flattening in photoshop means exactly that. You are flattening all of the layers in to one layer. Even if you only have one layer, if it is not labeled background then it is treated as a floating layer and can be flattened.
Compressing, means that the program is trying to make the file smaller using the least destructive way possible. lol. If you have to compress an image, make sure you learn the best way to do it, so that there is little to no loss of resolution/quality.

I am still a Procreate rookie, so I can't help too much there. When I do export from Procreate, I try to save as a .tiff file because that's what I'm most comfortable using in Photoshop. We used a lot of tiff files in printing 16 years ago.

I've been trying to export my layers as PSD from Procreate but I'm running into a roadblock with my drop box. I think I need more space for layered files in my DB.

[Coley]

@burvantill thanks so much. I have so much to learn!

If I keep my file in procreate under 25 mb I ca email it to myself then transfer to laptop where I use photoshop. I’ll have to invest I. Dropbox soon though I’m sure.

[burvantill]

@Coley be careful with emailing from procreate. I have read that doing that will also compress your file and may not be a good compression. Not positive, I haven’t checked on the results, because the only time I’ve done it I didn’t need to worry about high res.

[Coley]

@burvantill I first saved it as a psd file. So when I attached it to my email , it wasn’t attached directly from procreate but from my iPad. Thanks so much for the heads up though! I’m doing a test print at local printer so we’ll see!

[Nyrryl Cadiz]

@Coley hi! Export my files as psd to my google drive, download it to my desktop, and rework it on photoshop.

[burvantill]

@Coley oooh! I hadn't thought of that. So did you save it to your files and then email from there?

[Coley]

@Nyrryl-Cadiz oh, I hadn't thought of that. I hardly ever use Google drive. Is there a size limit?

[Nyrryl Cadiz]

@Coley yup, there's a 15 mb limit of free use. What I do is delete my unneeded files on the drive whenever I near the limit. it's tedious but free.

[Coley]

@burvantill yuppers!

[Coley]

@Nyrryl-Cadiz ok thanks. Good to know!

[xin li]

@Coley When you are working with printing. The best way to ensure you have the size and quality you need is to set the canvas with inch, or cm, but not a pixel, and with 300dpi. If you set the canvas with pixels, dip does not matter, but it is hard to know the exact printing size you get.

If you have a file with 8 X 10 inch canvas size, and 300 dpi, the final illustration in jpg should be good enough for printing. And the file size should be way bigger than 473kb.

hope this makes sense.

[Coley]

@xin-li yes, it makes sense. I did save it as 8x10 inches at 300 dpi. I don't know why the file size is so small when it's a jpeg. I've done it before and file size was much bigger. I have more research to do to figure it out!
I wonder if there's just less information because there weren't a ton of layers and it's only black and white? I don't know if that affects anything.
I sent the PNG to the printer but I haven't heard back from them yet.

Much appreciate the help everyone . I'm slowly figuring things out. Technology isn't natural for me.