Obtain print quality files

Obtaining professional quality print material is easy using Canva. Before any design gets printed, it is essential to download the design first and have it printed using a home or office printer, a local printing shop or any online printing service. This article will show you the tips and tricks on how to get the best quality print results. 

To print your design at the highest quality, it is important to start by ensuring you are downloading your design with the right file format.

Selecting the PDF – Print file format will download your design at 300 Dots Per Inch (DPI), which is professional print quality. JPG and PNG images are 96 DPI, which makes the file size smaller and is perfect for uploading photos to the web but not as well suited for print.

Canva downloads all designs using the RGB color profile. Most online print services should support printing in this format however if you need to convert your file to CMYK, download a PDF – Print file, convert it to JPG (select the “Excellent” JPG Quality option) and upload it here: Convert RGB to CMYK.

If you have downloaded your design in PDF: for print format and images are still blurry when printed, there may be other factors that affects the quality of your design:

• The quality of any uploaded media
• The dimensions of your design
• Printer settings

Quality of uploaded media

Images you have uploaded for use in a printed project should be in high resolution to ensure the best quality print. Using low quality images in your design, like images usually saved from websites, could result in pixelated images or fuzzy text.

To ensure images in your design is print quality:

1. Keep your images large when taking photos.
2. Avoid resizing or enlarging your image as this often results to quality loss.
3. Upload high resolution images.

The dimensions of your design

Printed documents vary in size and shape. There are the standard sizes like the A4 or Letter paper dimensions. On the other hand, design types such as business cards can vary in dimension from one card to another.

If you are sending your document to a professional printer, make sure you use the print company’s preferred design dimensions before starting any design work. This should prevent your design from stretching or squeezing to fit the printer’s pre-defined dimensions.

Canva For Work users can resize their existing designs using the custom dimensions or Magic Resize features. Standard Canva users can create designs with custom dimensions from scratch by selecting the Use custom dimensions button on the top right hand corner of the Canva home page.

Printer settings

Knowing and setting your printer settings is very important. When printer settings are not set correctly, you cannot obtain a proper print result.

Usually, default printer settings are set on “scaled to fit”, which means that the design is going to stretch to fit an A4 or Letter size page, and will only print on one side of the paper.

Always check your printer settings before attempting to print. Before printing, a dialog box will appear asking you for confirmation. The appearance and the content of the dialog box will vary depending on the printer and the program you’re printing with but it will show the printer settings that will be used.

You can also set your printer settings to “100%” scale to ensure your designs will print as you intended.