Help · Printing & exporting
Why a photo prints soft, and how to fix it
Nothing is wrong with your printer. A photograph contains a fixed number of pixels; making it bigger on the page spreads those same pixels over more paper. Past a point the eye can see the difference, and that point is roughly 300 pixels per printed inch.
Crevano tells you the number as you work, so this is something you catch while designing rather than after the parcel arrives.
The badge on a selected photo
Click any photo. A small badge appears in the Photo group of the toolbar, and the same number floats above the picture while you drag it.
It reads something like 220 DPI at 6.40in wide, and it is colour-coded against your document's own target, not against a fixed 300:
| Reading | Means | |---|---| | sharp at this size | At or above the target. Nothing to do | | slightly soft in print | Between two thirds of the target and the target. Usually acceptable for a background, not for a face | | too enlarged — will look soft | Below two thirds. Fix it |
A 72 ppi social banner is not "low resolution" because it is not print — the app judges each document against what it is for.
Three ways to fix it
1. Make the photo smaller
Drag a corner handle in. The badge climbs as you go. Stop when it reaches your target.
2. Let the app do it exactly
- Right-click the photo and choose Image properties….
- Read Largest size at 300 DPI — that is the biggest this photo can print sharply.
- Click Fit to 300 DPI. The photo resizes to exactly that, keeping its proportions.
3. Use a bigger original
Nothing recovers detail that was never captured. Uploads are stored at 1,600 pixels on the long edge, which covers about 5.3 inches at 300 DPI. If you need it bigger than that, you need a bigger source photograph — and there is nothing the app can do about a screenshot or a picture saved off a web page.
The check before you print
Before you print, and before you export a PDF, Crevano runs a preflight over every page and lists every photo below the target.
Each row shows the photo, its current DPI, the width it is at now, and the width it stays sharp up to. Then:
| Button | Does | |---|---| | Fit to 300 on a row | Resizes just that photo | | Fit all to target | Resizes every listed photo and continues | | Go back and fix | Closes the panel and leaves everything alone | | Continue anyway | Prints or exports as-is |
> Note > The preflight reports; it does not block. A soft photograph is sometimes a deliberate > choice — a full-bleed background is not a portrait — and the app will not argue with you > about it. It only runs before print and PDF, because those are the two outputs you cannot > take back.
Which side is measured
The badge reports the worst of the two axes and says which one it used. That is usually not the one you expect — a wide photo cropped tall runs out of pixels on its height first.