Finale Forum

If one's lyric font is 18 point and one's system scaling 41%, does that mean that the effective lyric point size is 41% of 18 (7.38)? Or is it something completely different?

It looks to me as though it might be a bit larger, but difficult to judge. It seems easy enough for my 79 year old eyes to read, while I might normally think of 7 point as uncomfortably small. (This is with a ‘study score’ printed to A4 that as a conductor's full score would be printed to at least B4, maybe A3.)

The actual size also depends on the Page Scaling percentage, and on the Staff Scaling percentage.
If - and only if - they are 100 %, then only the System Scaling is at play, and your calculation is correct.

By The Way:
From your post it sounds like you are looking at a printed page, not the computer screen.
Make sure that the page was printed without “print scaling”.

I'm assuming we're talking about the Resulting System Scaling number?

Zuill

Yes, we are talking about the resulting system scaling %. In this case the print scaling is 100%.

My usual printing firm prints at various percentages, but they are not available because of the quite severe Covid restrictions operating in Scotland (and probably won't be available until April or thereby). The on-line firm who printed this only print at 100%, so it was up to me to make any necessary adjustments to both the PDF scaling and page size before e-mailing the PDF. ie If I had wanted the same 320 page file printed to A3 (this firm doesn't do B4), I'd first have had to make the PDF page size A3 (easy enough here), otherwise I'd have received two A4 pages printed on each A3 side. My usual printers (the Scottish Music Centre) print to any A or B size from a nominally A4 PDF, and usually at a slightly reduced print scaling.

Despite all that, the actual print quality from the on-line printers was as good as I've ever seen and the binding perfectly serviceable, if not of my preferred type (see pic).

David Ward wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 24, 2020 8:20 pm

… My usual printers (the Scottish Music Centre) print to any A or B size from a nominally A4 PDF, and usually at a slightly reduced print scaling …

Regarding the “slightly reduced print scaling”:
The culprit could be a setting in the Adobe Reader print dialog (assuming that the Scottish Music Centre uses Adobe Reader when printing).
In the Print dialog there is an option to print at Actual Size, but this option is not “automatically” selected by default.