title: RDLC export to pdf with high resolution background image
body: <p>Recently, for one of my current clients, I had to create an RDLC Report. More specifically an invoice on a digital stationary paper. (See “stationary_paper_example.png” <a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/OPQ2v.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">1</a>).</p>
  <h2>Problems</h2>
  <p>When a high-resolution image is set as report background the scaling of the image is completely off. See “stationary_paper_falsely_scaled.png” <a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/6OAEn.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">2</a></p>
  <h2>Previous workaround</h2>
  <p>As the reports with digital stationary paper were introduced just a project before, we got it working by setting an image-element in the background (z-index) and set a high-resolution image. But this time we got some new implicit restrictions.</p>
  <h2>Implicit restrictions</h2>
  <ol>
  <li>Current page number</li>
  </ol>
  <p>The client wanted to show the current page number above the invoice articles table (see &quot;stationary_paper_page_number.png&quot; <a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/aPPdD.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">3</a>). You can get this information only in the header or footer section of the report</p>
  <ol start="2">
  <li>Image-Element</li>
  </ol>
  <p>The image element I set as “report background” can't be placed inside header, body, and footer of the report (see &quot;stationary_paper_image_as_background.png&quot; <a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/WbkQc.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">4</a>)</p>
  <p>So either the client would change their report layout or I get this thing going.</p>
  <h2>New problems</h2>
  <ol>
  <li>Setting high-resolution image as background</li>
  </ol>
  <p>As already mentioned, when you simply set a high-resolution image as background you will (probably) experience a “scaling” bug as seen in “stationary_paper_falsely_scaled.png” <a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/6OAEn.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">2</a>. The image is rendered almost completely out of scope.</p>
  <ol start="2">
  <li>Setting low-resolution image as background</li>
  </ol>
  <p>If you set a low-res image as background you will (probably) see a kind of fuzzy background as seen in “stationary_paper_low_res.png” <a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/eh5tw.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">5</a>. This will also happen when you export this solution with a “PDF printer” such as “Microsoft print to PDF”.</p>