Is there a way to enlarge the page sizes in a pdf to add Bleed and Crop marks?

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
December 18, 2020
3 replies
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I have a copy that I am going to have printed, but was told that .185" would be trimmed off of each side. Is the a way to enlarge the page size to add a white boarder around every page? I know in Photoshop, you can enlarge the image size and/or canvas size, so I know I could do it in Photoshop, but it would have to be done page at a time, 250 pages!!!! Is there a way to do the same in Acrobat? I don't want anything cut off by mistake when printed.

Thanks,

Sean

Edit and convert PDFs

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JR Boulay

Community Expert

Start here: https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/crop-pdf-pages.html

Acrobate du PDF, InDesigner et Photoshopographe

Luke Jennings3

Community Expert

So you have a document (let's say it's 8.5 x 11") and you are concerned something will get cut-off when printed, normally, an 8.5 x 11" page would include bleed and be printed on a larger sheet, then trimmed to the final size after printing. You would supply your printer with a PDF that has an overall size that is larger than 8.5 x 11, (with or without crop marks) but with a trim size of 8.5 x 11, this would be created from the original program (InDesign for example). If you have an 8.5 x 11" PDF without bleed and with content that ends at the trim line (no margins), your best option is to get a new PDF with proper bleed and margins, if this is not possible, you have a few options;

1. You can reduce your page content size (to about 95%) and add a white border, you can do this using an Acrobat Preflight Fixup (Tools> Print Production> Preflight> Fixups) see attached screen shot.

2. Place the 250 page PDF into a new facing page InDesign file using the Place Multipage PDF script, you can add bleed where needed (generally not needed in the spine) by slightly scaling the pages in InDesign or adding content, export to a new PDF (with bleed).

3. Enfocus PitStop is an Acrobat Plugin that can add bleed where none exists, but it's expensive.

How is this book binding? If saddle stitched, there will be some push-out, where the pages at the center of the book will pushout farther than the outside pages and get trimmed slightly shorter, if this is what your printer is trying to tell you, ask them if they can scale the pages to compensate for pushout when the pages are imposed. If perfect bound, or wiro bound you don't need to worry about pushout.