Help with 2d Graphic Export for Postcard mailer

Hi, I’m a new user and have created a ISO floor plan showing some built-in cabinetry. I would like to use a portion of the model as an image to eventually print on a 4" x 6" postcard. I am having difficulties with quality and sizing. Was wondering if there are methods to insure the best quality/resolution as possible for successful printing.

I use GIMP as a photo editior and also have PDF24 to create pdf’s. Not sure if exporting as a PDF has higher resolution than JPEG.

Any help would be appreciated on methodology including additional (free) software etc. I am working on Win 7 Home. Thanks!

It’s probably best to export a PNG file. You can select that under File>Export 2D Graphic. There’ll be an Options button in the lower right corner of the Export window. click on that and you can export at a larger size.

Thanks Dave, I’ll try that

Good luck.

By the way, here’s a combination image I made of exports at different sizes. The same sketchy line style was used for all of them.

export

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I’ve had good luck just taking a screenshot and then pasting it into my favorite graphic editor. For a 4" x 6" postcard, I think that would be sufficient.

That’s great if you like screen resolution.

Agreed. But how many do you really need for a postcard?

I’m not making any judgement about what the OP needs for a post card but I find for my use, I prefer to make larger image exports and make appropriate adjustments in an image editor.

If you are printing at 150 or 300 DPI or greater, screen res can look pretty awful.

nice rendering. How do you attach a file to these posts? I did not see a option for…

Thanks.

You can attach directly by uploading a file from your computer. click the button to the left of </> at the top of the text window.

For the image above, though, I just copied the HTML tagged link from my Flikr album.

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You’ll find Christina’s simple viewport plugin quite helpful in achieving the aspect ratio you want.

Eneroth Viewport Resizer — Extension Warehouse

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Thanks Geo. I’ll take a look

OK, Thanks Dave. Good to know

Just FYI - for most image packages a PDF normally just dumps a bitmap image into a PDF page; the quality depends on the quality of the image file wrapped within the PDF. The “PDF” format just makes it easier to read and harder to edit. (But it still is just a raster file.)

Desktop publishing packages and word processors will normally export lines and text as lines and text, so the quality will always be perfect. (…assuming it’s line-art and not raster,)

nice rendering. How do you attach a file to these posts? I did not see a option for…

Just drag and drop onto the text window where you type

More fyi: On a Windows system, checking the High Accuracy HLR (whatever that means) box in the lower right-hand corner of the Print dialog causes SU to output vectors to the printer, albeit at the expense of textures and shadows. If you redirect this vector output to a PDF printer (such as Cute PDF), you will thereby create a vector-based PDF file with the associated line quality you would expect.

-Gully

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Thanks Gadget2020 for your help

Thanks Gully for your help