Enlarging small pages

[leecreighton]

I have an ~300 page PDF file that I have compiled from several sources. Many of the books are conveniently 8.5"x11",but a couple are smaller: 5"x7", and a couple 4"x6".

In the Prepress option I picked to make all pages 8.5" x 11", it added whitespace to the small books. When printed, they are quite small, occupying the center space of the page.

Is there a way that I could have the PrePress make all the pages the same size, but enlarge the small ones rather than add white space around them? The small pages would be readable in that case.

Thanks, as always, for the help.

P.-S. If you'd like a PDF to play with, I made a small one and put it at Dropbox - PDF Sample.pdf - Simplify your life​.

[Karl Heinz Kremer · Accepted solution]

Take a look at the scaling options in Preflight:

Scaling Page Content in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC - KHKonsulting LLC

[leecreighton]

This was a fantastically helpful answer, but there are some pages that did not enlarge. They mostly are pages that I had to scan separately from my original scan. They had pictures, so the 300dpi that the form feeder scanner would do wasn't sufficient. I scanned these pages at 600dpi so the pictures would be legible. I've placed the whole book in an accessible place. Anyone willing to have a look?

Dropbox - Completed Manual Enhanced_Redacted_DC.pdf - Simplify your life

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

As far as I can tell, all pages are 6x9", so the preflight profile did it's job. There are however some pages that have more whitespace around the margins. This whitespace is part of the scanned image, and Acrobat does not know that there is nothing useful in that part of the image. You would have to crop these images before you let Acrobat resize them.

[leecreighton]

This is what I see, near page 31. Pages look to be original size.

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

Ah, now I see. In my thumbnail view these pages look like the other pages, that's why I missed it. I used Acrobat's crop tool and cropped off 0.6" at the top and 0.7" from the bottom for pages 29 and 31 and re-ran the scale function. That fixed the problem and I ended up with 6x9" pages for these two as well.

[leecreighton]

I did the same thing, and it worked. Thanks! I have one more question below.

[leecreighton]

One more question, if I'm not wearing out my welcome:

The printer is going to tell me that I overcropped some of these pages and the coil binding will cut through text. Is there a way to add space (say 3/4" to 1") to the pages?

I think they'll all be printed at 8.5"x11", so maybe space will be inserted when that happens.

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

You can add space with the crop tool.

[Luke Jennings]

In addition to the good information above, you can place your pdf into InDesign, using the Place multipage pdf script (Window> Utilities> Scripts> Run) which will allow you better tools to re-size and re-position the pages.

You can set up the InDesign file as facing pages, where you can add a guide or margin on the master pages showing you where the coil binding will be on every page. You can also add auto page numbering.

Export as single pages (with bleed) for your printer.

[Mary22771951tek9]

Hi that's my problem as well, everytime I'll be printing my document it appears smaller that I can't read them anymore. I would like to share how I solved my problem. Open your pdf file at the bottom click MODIFY then choose PAGE SIZE. It will give you size options click any size and click AUTO FIT. Click the check ✅ sign then click SAVE.  Open your saved pdf file once again, print  and "wallah" you'll the size you've wanted.  I hope this will help you.