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I need to create a pdf 8.75" x 11.25" (which has the bleeding and safety zones) for a print flyer of 8" x 11". My print shop said the flyer pdf I got is actually 36.47 x 46.89. My designer sent me a screenshot of this - see inside red box.
I'm not sure if this is where the export size setting is set. How do I get my designer to export the size correctly? Is there a setting for print letter size with bleeding pre-set in Illustrator?
The data is the same.
8.75"x11.25" at 300dpi is the exact same size as 36.47"x46.89" at 72dpi - the only difference is how the data is displayed, but it's the same data.
If you increase the PPI in the 72ppi file without resampling pixels you end up with an 8.75x11.25" file. There is no difference.
Note in the animation above the Dimensions do not change - they are still 2626px x 3376px. All that is being altered is the density of the pixels for output, resulting in a reduction of physical dimensions.
It's the exact same data.
Any print provider that is unaware of this would certainly not be worth my money and I'd have some difficulty trusting that they know what they are doing.
Simply because some app somewhere is assuming the PPI is 72 that doesn't mean the data is insufficient for print quality output.
To put it rather bluntly, your print provider doesn't know what they are doing. Find another one.
The 36.47 x 46.89 value has no sense. It is not a confusion in vs cm or anything like that.
Using Adobe Reader, open the PDF using you sent and mouse over the lower part of the window and the measures declared on the document will pop.
I am not sure how or why this is happening but, I did find something suspect- your print shop dimensions of 36.47" x 46.89" are both exactly 4.168 times bigger than the size of your intended dimensions of 8.25" x 11.25". Curiously, a resolution of 300 is also exactly 4.168 times a resolution of 72.
The designer's document size looks correct in the AI file. Perhaps in the pdf conversion something was changed ? It seems the print shop is expecting a resolution of 72 and the document is actually 300 and therefore they are seeing it 4.168 times larger than intended.
This is a bit of a conjecture on my part but the numbers are saying there is a resolution issue. The whole resolution/dpi/ppi thing is tricky with Illustrator because it is vector and vectors are, by definition, resolution independent- and yet, our monitors and certainly our printers are very affected by different resolutions.
