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Discarding cropped areas of pages

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
June 25, 2012
15 replies
101050 views

I am taking PDFs of documents made for printing and reformatting them & compressing them to be downloadable PDFs on our website.

This requires cropping some pages manually using the crop tool. I then use the PDF Optimizer to compress the file into a web suitable file size.

I just realized that cropping a page DOES NOT discard the content outside of the crop. Even after using PDF Optimizer or Reduce File Size, the content outside of the crop still remains. Anyone with Acrobat can remove the crop or change the crop.

I'm trying to create PDFs with the smallest file size possible, so it's silly to keep the content outside of the crop. Is there a way to discard this content?

Correct answer Lilbert Go

Hello,

This worked for me:

1.) Visit this YouTube video for instructions.

Adobe Acrobat:crop pages and remove all objects outside of the page area as defined by the Crop Box - YouTube

2.) Download the Preflight fixup from this blog.

Proficiografik - Acrobat 9 - When the crop tool is not cropping and how to fix it

Download link: http://www.proficiografik.com/sharing/CropBoxFix.kfp.zip

3.) Import the DOT-kfp file by [Cmd+Shift+X (Mac) /Ctl+Shift+X (Win)].

Click "Options" > "Import Preflight profile".

Select the imported fixup and click "Analyze and fix".

Goodluck and merry Christmas!

Show previous replies

G

Graham3D_

Participant

I have a similar problem.

I have a pdf which is an excerpt from a book with a large white border. The PDF is in A4 format, but the book is half the size A5.

I want to print it actual size but on A5 as a booklet print.

I have cropped the pages to A5.

But when I try to print it I see the large white margins still there, and the A4 page reduced to A5.

How can I make the Crops permanent?

K

kind_days15B9

Inspiring

No, no, no... you all got it wrong... maybe?

First, this situation is a royal PITA! It needs to be easier to perform a permanent crop. I've been hit by this way too many times. At the very least, I wish Adobe InDesign obeyed the PDF crop settings! When I import a cropped PDF into InDesign (and I forgot to engage a permanent crop)... sure enough, all that cropped just is still there!

Every time I really get annoyed about this, I blast off a surprisingly polite feature request to Adobe but we all know where those feature requests go..... I digress...

So how the heck do you actually permanently remove PDF crops?

Here are the ANNOYING steps required (as of Adobe v11.0)

Select All Tools > Print Production > Preflight.
In Preflight, select Select Single Fixups (it is a wrench symbol).
Select Permanent Crop.
Click Fix (another stupid wrench in the lower right corner of the Preflight window.
Supply a new file name because Adobe won't allow you to overwrite the already opened file, silly person!
REPEAT for every single eff'n PDF you need to fix! Oh... you might occasionally encounter a failed write... just do it again and this time you can overwrite the failed write file.

Bloody annoying but that seems to be the only way to do this! Can this workflow be automated?... like the moment I do the frig'n crop I just want to save sans the cropped baggage!

MSG to ADOBE! I do my own backups, thank you. If I want to crop something out, that means I no longer want what I have cropped out!

Okay done... hopefully I have helped someone.

T

Test Screen Name

Legend

Thought I'd posted a reply; can't find it.

If you want InDesign to honour the crop box rather than the trim box - which you might, though it isn't normal prepress practice - you should be able to select this in the options when you place a PDF. If you're in prepress you do need to know the difference between trim box, bleed box, and crop box: know what they do and what you are setting. The art box might be important too, though I've never used it.

I agree it would be handy if there was a "remove cropped content" option on the crop dialog, since that's the logical place to look for this entirely separate (and must be optional) feature. There is a danger though that people would expect this to be a full redaction solution and get into trouble with personal data.

sinjinz1984

Participant

There is a way in Acrobat 11 to remove the cropped content permanently. Just select "Tools", then "Protection", and then select "Hidden Comment". Acrobat then searched for cropped content, hidden metadata and such, and then asks you what you want to delete. Once you've made your selection about which parts of the document you want to permanently remove, click "Remove". This then permanently removes anything outside of the cropped area. Adobe will probably ask you if you're really sure about making the changes, because once the content has been removed, it cannot be returned. Then, just make sure to save the changes that you've made.

Hope that this helps...

raeben3

Inspiring

The Removing hidden content method turned my 22 mb (scanned) PDF file into a 450 mb file! What's up with that?

T

the_10th_letter_x2

Participant

Acrobat allows you to save a PDF as an EPS {Save As Other... More Options... Encapsulated PostScript}. Opening the EPS file generates a PDF sans cropped area. The PDF can then be optimized or reduced or saved as is.

T

Test Screen Name

Legend

This is just another way of "refrying" and not even as good as the normal way of printing to PDF. So, in my view, not recommended.

joshweilandAuthor

Known Participant

What I've been doing in Acrobat 11 is crop the page, then zoom out. Using the "Edit Text & Images" option, I then click-and-drag over the page that got cropped. This selects the elements in the cropped page. After cropping, I hit "Delete".

B

Bill12

Inspiring

It used to be that Reduce File Size would delete the cropping. I think that feature was dropped. The only way I have found is to refry the PDF by printing to a new PDF, generally not a recommended workflow. You can also delete areas with the redaction tool. That may allow you to then adjust the size and all. The info would be gone in that case, though the basic space is still there. By using redaction and then crop, that might meet your file size needs. The other approach that I have mentioned is to reprint to the Adobe PDF printer and create a new PDF.