Print export turns a finished comic or picture book into files a commercial printer will accept: an interior PDF, a wraparound cover PDF, a combined reading copy and, when you want them, a numbered image zip and a CBZ. It lives on the comic and picture-book admin panels, behind a Print export button, and every option it offers is admin-only.This article covers what the export produces, what each option changes, the honesty rule behind the dpi readout, what the preflight checks, where the files end up and for how long, and which part of the whole thing costs credits.
A build can make up to five files, chosen in the modal's Outputs list: the interior PDF (every page in reading order, no cover), the cover PDF (one wraparound spread: back, spine, front, all with bleed), a combined reading copy that stitches cover and interior into one file, an images zip of the numbered page JPEGs, and a CBZ archive of the same pages for comic readers.The interior and combined files insert every page a print run needs and nothing a reader would recognise as padding without a reason: a front cover (the approved cover image, or a title cover typeset over the style anchor when none exists), a title card inside the front cover, a dedication page when one is set, the body, the behind-the-scenes section told as a story (an opener, one spread per approved roster entry with the prose and the real sheet prompt, one spread showing a page prompt filled for a real page, and a closing invitation to try it yourself), the picture book's "Did you find" appendix when the things lists are sent to the back, notes pages to round out the binding, a colophon inside the back cover, and the back cover. Every page that is not story art sits on a dark gradient drawn from the book's own colours, so no sheet is white. Every inserted page is named in the preflight so nothing is a silent surprise.
A picture book uses its own cover ratio and a fit-to-width layout by default. A comic uses the trim you pick and can crop, extend or letterbox the art depending on the art-placement option.
A sixth, optional output, web showcase PDF, renders the finished combined file at web size: RGB, 150 dpi, JPEG compressed, meant for the public sales pages rather than a print run. Mark any finished build with the Mark as showcase button on the history list. The marked file becomes the sample a visitor can download from the special's public page and from the picture-book order form, shown next to the exact settings it was built with.
The options, in plain words
Trim picks the finished page size: US comic (the default for comics), A5, digest, A5 landscape (the picture-book default), A4 landscape, or a custom size in millimetres. Every preset already includes a 3 mm bleed on every side.Binding is saddle stitch (stapled, page count padded up to a multiple of four, capped at 64 pages) or perfect binding (glued spine, padded to an even count, a 12 mm gutter, and a spine width calculated from the page count and the paper caliper you set). Past 64 pages the modal switches the default to perfect binding and says why.Colour target and profile controls the CMYK conversion. The default profile is ISO Coated v2 (FOGRA39) once you have uploaded that file once. Until then the export falls back to the vendored PSO Coated v3 (FOGRA51). An uncoated option (FOGRA52) is vendored too. You can also upload your own printer's ICC profile for one export at a time. Whichever profile is in use is named in the modal and again in the preflight, so a download always says what it was built against.Art placement decides how a page's art meets the trim: edge-extend (the default: the art is scaled to cover the trim and the outer few millimetres are extended into the bleed), scale-to-bleed (the art covers trim and bleed outright, cropping a little on the tight axis), or fit-inside (the whole image stays visible, and the bands above and below it are filled with a mirrored, blurred extension of the art rather than white, which is how the picture book's fit-to-width look is built).Fit pages to the pictures (picture books only) drops the normed trim and gives every page the size of its own art, with no bands at all. It is meant for a reading copy rather than a print run: the cover file is skipped, the preflight says the size is not a normed print size, and it cannot be combined with perfect binding, which needs one page size for its spine.Text layer (picture books only) places the story line and the "did you find" things list on each page: the line stays where the illustration put it or moves to a top or bottom corner or centre, in five sizes; the things list sits as one small row at the bottom centre, bottom right, in a caption band, at the back of the book as an appendix, or off. Only the back-of-the-book choice adds the appendix.Branding is Standard or None. Standard prints the "Made with Infinite Story" line, the "Illustrated with" line and the AI colophon. None removes every printed credit line, needs a reason (paste the buyer's request from the order mail), and records who chose it and when on the special and on the export. The AI marker in the file's metadata stays in both modes.Cover can be rendered fresh, uploaded from your own file, or left as whatever the special already has. A rendered cover keeps the top third clear for the title text we typeset over it (Bangers for comics), and the back cover carries a blurb, the "Made with Infinite Story" line and the AI-generated notice. You approve a cover before it ships in a build.Dedication and making-of text are short pieces of copy you write for the front matter: a dedication page and an opening spread explaining how the piece was made. Both are saved through their own save action, never through the general special-settings save, so saving one never overwrites the comic's style or anchor settings.Making-of spreads are picked per roster entry (every approved character and scene, all selected by default). Each spread pairs that entry's design sheet with a caption mode: none, the sheet's own description fields, or the sheet plus your custom instructions. Long text is trimmed at a sentence boundary to fit the page, and any trim is listed in the preflight.Crop marks are off by default, because most printers impose their own. Turning them on adds registration marks just outside the bleed.
The dpi readout, and what amber means
Every page is exported from its stored pixels. Nothing is ever upscaled to hit a target resolution, and the modal says so next to the readout.The effective resolution at your chosen trim is shown per page and per class (page, cover, roster sheet) with a plain verdict: green at 250 dpi or better, amber from 200 up to 250, red below 200. The worst page is named so you know exactly what to look at before you build.US comic trim sits in amber territory at the resolution pages are actually stored at. That is expected, not a bug: switching to A5 or digest trim turns the same pages green, because the same pixels cover a smaller page.
The preflight
Every build runs a preflight check against the finished file before it is offered for download. It checks the PDF/X-1a structure (the trim, bleed and safe-area boxes, the output-intent profile, embedded fonts, no stray RGB or transparency), reports the dpi and any crop per page, flags any element that crosses outside the safe margins, and reports how much of the darkest pixels came out as pure black ink rather than a colour mix.A structural error fails the build outright: nothing broken ships. Warnings, such as a skipped page or a truncated caption, do not fail the build, but they do show up in the modal's preflight summary and in a `preflight.json` file that sits next to the export.
Where files land, and for how long
Export files are stored outside the story-image tree used by the regular backup, in their own storage area. The history list on the modal shows every past build for that special with its status, its files and sizes, the dpi verdict, the profile it used, and a download link for each file.Only the three newest exports are kept per special. Building a fourth one removes the oldest, files included. Deleting an export from the history list removes its files immediately.
What costs credits, and what does not
Opening the modal, changing options, watching the preview update, building interior or cover PDFs, downloading anything, and re-running a build all cost nothing. The one thing that spends credits is rendering a fresh cover with the AI: that is billed at the normal page rate, the same as any other artwork the special generates. Uploading your own cover image instead is free.
A cover render is a real generation call and cannot be undone once it starts. Approve or discard the result before building a file that includes it.
Best practices
Read the dpi verdict before you build, not after: an amber page at US comic trim is expected, but a red page anywhere means a page was stored at a resolution too low for print, whatever trim you pick.
Upload your own printer's ICC profile whenever the print shop supplies one. The vendored profiles are a reasonable default, not a guarantee that matches every press.
Save the dedication and making-of text before you build. They are typeset into the file at build time, so a build started before saving ships the previous wording.
Check the preflight summary for skipped pages before shipping a file to a customer. A skipped page shifts every page number after it.
Keep the export you actually sent to a printer somewhere outside the app's own retention window. Only the three newest builds per special survive on our side.
Under the hood
The interior and combined PDFs are built as PDF/X-1a:2003: CMYK only, no transparency, no encryption, embedded font subsets, and an XMP block carrying both the PDF/X identification and the same AI-generated marker the EU AI Act backfill wrote into the underlying images.Colour conversion runs through LittleCMS with relative colorimetric intent and black point compensation. Pixels close enough to pure black are converted to ink-only black rather than a four-colour mix, so lettering and line art print as a single clean layer instead of a blurred edge.The dedication and making-of text save through a dedicated route that merges into the special's existing configuration rather than replacing it, so saving one field never wipes the comic's style, anchor or version settings.A structural check runs against the produced file itself, not against the settings that built it, and its result (including any warning) is stored next to the files as `preflight.json` as well as summarised in the history list.