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I work for a company designing t-shirts. We get transfers printed by another company. The transfers we received for a recent design were to small, as I'm guessing they were printed portrait instead of landscape. The representative from the company we order prints from is claiming that it isn't their fault and that...

"Sometimes the images we receive are not the size you send. This is due to the different formats of the files and the way our computers convert them."

He says it's our fault because we didn't send the design dimensions to him along with the design. The file sent was a PDF. Am I correct in understanding that a PDF will always open at it's intended size? I thought the size was embedded within the PDF. I'm fairly certain I'm correct, but don't want to basically call him out for it without knowing I'm correct. Do computers really convert PDFs so that they're a completely different size? That would be a terrible way for PDFs to operate, if that's the case.

Tyler Johnson
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  • A PDF file may not "open at it's intended size", this depends on the viewer and its settings. You can create a 5 x 15 ft banner PDF, but you don't need a HUGE monitor to see it. You can see the Real World dimensions of your document in Acrobat if you move the mouse to the bottom left. Use this to verify you did not accidentally sent a downscaled file. – Jongware Jan 31 '14 at 18:03
  • I've checked the PDF. I opened it in Acrobat and hit CTRL + D. It says it's on a 11.5 x 8 inch document. The design is supposed to be 10 inches wide. The transfers on the shirt have the design at 6.5 inches wide. The design was in a landscape document, but I think they printed it portrait, which would explain the output size. – Tyler Johnson Jan 31 '14 at 18:10

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The size is definitely embedded in PDF, and the purpose of PDF format is to be used as the final document format before printing. My advice is to send a note with desired dimensions, perhaps it's their machine that resizes the picture.

Vladivarius
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  • That's what I thought. I will send the sizes from now on. I just don't want to have this pinned on me! Thanks for your help! – Tyler Johnson Jan 31 '14 at 18:11