When a book is finished you will want it out of the Editor — as a file you keep and share, and often as something you can hold. This guide covers exporting to PDF, choosing the right settings, and what happens when you take that file to a printer.

Exporting to PDF

Press Export to PDF in the top bar of the Editor. The same action sits in the Book menu in the top-left corner, if you are already there.

A short dialog opens with two choices: colour mode and resolution. Those two settings decide whether your file is right for a screen or right for a printing press, so it is worth thirty seconds of thought rather than accepting the defaults.

What you can pick depends on your plan. Starter exports in RGB at 100 DPI, Creator goes up to 300 DPI, and Master Pro adds CMYK and 500 DPI. Plans also differ in exports per month: 3 on Starter, 15 on Creator, unlimited on Master Pro. Every download counts as an export, whatever stage the book is in.

Colour mode: RGB or CMYK

Mode	When to choose it
RGB	The book will be read on a screen — sent to family, opened on a tablet, attached to an email. RGB is how screens mix colour, and it holds the bright, glowing tones your illustrations were generated in.
CMYK (print-ready)	The book is going on paper. CMYK is how ink mixes, and it is what print services expect. Exporting in CMYK means the colours you approve are closer to the colours that come off the press.

The honest caveat: paper cannot reproduce everything a backlit screen can. A few very bright, saturated tones will come out softer in print no matter what you do. Choosing CMYK is what lets you see that happening before the order, instead of after it.

Resolution: 100, 300 or 500 DPI

DPI is how much detail is packed into every printed inch. More detail means a sharper book and a heavier file.

Setting	What it is for
100 DPI	Screen only. A light file for sending and previewing. Do not send this to a printer — it will look soft and pixelated on paper.
300 DPI	The standard for printing. It is the minimum most print services accept, and it keeps file sizes manageable.
500 DPI	Maximum quality, and the recommended setting. Worth it for a keepsake or a large format, where fine detail in the illustrations is on show.

Which combination to pick

What you are doing	Export as
Sending the book to family, reading it on a tablet	RGB, 100 or 300 DPI
Printing at home or at a copy shop	CMYK, 300 DPI
A professional print run or a keepsake copy	CMYK, 500 DPI
Uploading to a print-on-demand service	CMYK, 300 or 500 DPI — check the service's own limits first

Taking your PDF to a printer

Today AnyTale gives you the file; the printing itself happens wherever you choose. In practice that means one of three routes:

A home printer — fine for a single copy to read at bedtime. Expect colours to shift and pages to be single-sided unless your printer does duplex.
A local print shop — better paper and binding, and someone to ask if a file is wrong before it is printed.
A print-on-demand service — the route if you want a proper bound book, or to sell it. Amazon KDP is the most common.

Whichever you choose, the printer will have requirements of its own: a trim size from their list, bleed if your illustrations run to the edge of the page, and margins wide enough that nothing important disappears into the spine. Those requirements belong to the printer, not to AnyTale, so read their specification before you export.

Watch the file size

High resolution and a long full-colour book add up quickly. Print services cap upload size — Amazon KDP, for example, will not take a file over 650 MB, and warns that excessively high resolution can cause processing to time out.

If your export is close to a limit, drop from 500 to 300 DPI. On a picture book the difference is very hard to see, and it can halve the file.

Coming soon: ordering a printed copy from AnyTale

Right now the path from file to physical book is yours to walk. We are working on an integration with a print-on-demand service so that you will be able to order a printed copy of your book directly from AnyTale, without exporting a PDF and uploading it anywhere.

Until then, exporting in CMYK and following your printer's specification is the way to get a book you are happy with.

Tip: Before ordering a print run, order one copy. Colours, paper and the way an illustration sits in the gutter all look different in your hands than on screen — and finding that out on one copy is much cheaper than on fifty.