Discarding cropped areas of pages

[joshweiland]

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?

[Bill12]

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.

[MichaelKazlow]

In the Protection tools, there is an tool to remove hidden information. This should do what you want.

[Manuel218142128qt3]

You are outstanding!

[AbdurRahman25786549buyu]

Really Excellent answer, super simple tip

[MuhammadT]

You are a life saver!

[Alex Z_24]

Fantastic suggestion, exactly what I was hoping for! Much quicker and easier than the alternatives.

[the_10th_letter_x2]

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.

[Test Screen Name]

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.

[joshweiland]

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".

[sinjinz1984]

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]

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

[shawninvancouver]

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)

1. Select All Tools > Print Production > Preflight.
2. In Preflight, select Select Single Fixups (it is a wrench symbol).
3. Select Permanent Crop.
4. Click Fix (another stupid wrench in the lower right corner of the Preflight window.
5. Supply a new file name because Adobe won't allow you to overwrite the already opened file, silly person!
6. 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.

[Test Screen Name]

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.

[ClearBlueSky-kD610V]

Where do you see "Permanent Crop" under Preflight?  I tried searching for the text and did not find it.  I am using Adobe Acrobat Pro XI version 11.0.11 and have the Preflight dialog open under Print Production.  In the dialog box, the drop down has Show all and then I clicked then wrench icon which was the third button to the right of the drop down.  Under the Pages category I see the following:

Crop all pages to bounding box

Remove page objects which are completely outside of page area

Remove page objects which are completely outside of trim area

At first none of these options removed the content outside of the crop area. I had to go to Set Page Boxes and then changed the margins for CropBox, ArtBox, TrimBox, and BleedBox.  Then I ran the remove objects outside of trim area and it worked.  I have no idea what all of the boxes mean but this is what I did, if this might help anyone or if anyone would know a better way.

[artbycaf]

I had problems with this too and found a similar solution. I ended up creating a custom preflight fix that simultaneously converted the trimbox to the cropbox and then removed page objects outside of the trim.

"Remove page objects which are completely outside of trim area"

"Set TrimBox to CropBox"

So now it's just the one place I need to go to.

Hope that helps someone.

[Graham3D_]

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?

[johns64713872]

In case this is not so late as to be useless, a little javascript seems to be the best tool for this job. I struggled with preflight and other options (such as sanitize and remove hidden information and PDF optimize), none of which set the media box (i.e. the whole page area, similar to the pasteboard in InD) to the crop box. This did the trick -

for (var p=0; p<this.numPages; p++) {
  this.setPageBoxes({cBox: "Media", nStart: p, nEnd: p, rBox: (this.getPageBox ("Crop", p))});
  }

This can be established as a function and then called from an action or a menu item, or this "raw" js can be used in a custom action.

I am more or less totally ignorant of js, so creating an interface to select isolated page numbers to run the get and set PageBox(es) functions is well beyond me. Of course one could simply use a single line to run it on the current page, simply substituting for p whatever the code is for the current page (I think it's this.PageNum):

 this.setPageBoxes({cBox: "Media", nStart: p, nEnd: p, rBox: (this.getPageBox ("Crop", p))});

Hope this is helpful to someone. It solved a major problem for us creating ebook covers from traditional cover spreads and deleting the leftover spine and non-used cover content.

[Test Screen Name]

I should add that this does not address the original subject (though I hope it's useful). Setting the Media Box also does not remove the invisible objects.

[raeben3]

The Javascript solution worked!  Thanks so much. 

For the record I made an action running this JS -

1. for (var p=0; p<this.numPages; p++) { 
2.   this.setPageBoxes({cBox: "Media", nStart: p, nEnd: p, rBox: (this.getPageBox ("Crop", p))}); 
3.   }

[DCardillo]

I have a solution — it's the some solution mentioned already. (Preflight fixup to remove items outside Trim.)

I found this page because I'm having a unique (related) problem. This solution works flawlessly on a Mac. It's corrupting the other objects on the page in Windows, however.

Assuming you're working in a prepress environment, and you're exporting PDFs out of InDesign with Bleed and Crop and Registration marks: The stock fixup, "Remove page objects which are completely outside of page area," does not work, as it is set to remove objects outside the Media box. (If your PDF has a Media box that is defined as the Trim box or that is indeed your page bounds, then this fixup may work for you.) You need to create a new one.

You can duplicate it, and click on Edit and change "Completely outside:" from Media box to Trim box.

And yes, you can also create a fixup to automatically set the Crop (or Media) box to the Trim box. You can even make one that combines these fixups. I have, and as I said, it works without issue — on a Mac.

I've distributed it to coworkers who are using the same version of Acrobat (X/10) on Windows, and it does what it's supposed to, only something gets corrupted. It's like the first 4 or 5 lines have the leading set to 0, and they all munge up together on one line.

Removing just objects outside Bleed doesn't create this issue. But, as the Bleed sometimes contains sensitive info (slugs), I want to remove these.

Has anyone else seen this, and can anyone offer any suggestions?

[nmgrant176]

Will @Adobe ever give us an answer to this? People have been asking this question for six years. I remove hidden content outside the cropbox area and by PDF goes from ~40MB to ~850MB. This is using the Remove Hidden Information feature. How is that even possible??

Please, answer? Fix?

[onkesh]

Hello nmgrant176 ,

We are sorry that you are facing such issue. But, we are unable to reproduce the issue at our end and need your help.

Can you answer the following questions that will help us look deeper into the issue:

1. What is the version of Acrobat Pro DC that you are using?
2. What is the OS version of your system?
3. Can you please share the files you are facing issue with, if not confidential?
4. Can you please share any screenshots or screen-recording?
5. Can you please provide the exact steps or the workflow that led to the issue.

Thanks,

Adobe Acrobat DC Team

Getting version of Application (Acrobat DC)

• Click on Help menu in application
• Click on About Adobe Acrobat DC…

[nmgrant176]

Thank you for being thorough in your response and asking all of these questions. I have verified that the Remove Hidden Information does indeed expand the document size, specifically the images (as others have reported here and I don't think my DC version has anything to do with it nor my OS.) And you know what? I could actually live with my PDF being 10x the size IF it actually did delete the extra page content outside of the set crop box.

The bigger question that I want an answer to is why we can't permanently crop something... The set crop box will be ignored by other programs such as the Automator function Combine PDF Pages and my crop is then undone after running that function. I realize you want it to be non-destructive but the ability to perma-crop a document would be invaluable. Even if the function was hidden in a deep sub-menu, it should still be a choice if I want to destructively remove content/empty page space outside of my printer marks (even if it is Apple's fault for not honoring the pretty much de-facto PDF standards set forth by Adobe.)

[Lilbert Go · Accepted solution]

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 ...

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!