Inaccurate size printing of saving to PFD in 2015

[WinsorNewton7]

I'm a retired EE who has used FrameMaker starting with version 1 from Frame Technologies, up until I retired, at which time I chose not to upgrade my then-current Frame 6.0. I still use FrameMaker for all kinds of jobs. perhaps not to the depth as when I was in industry. Recently, I've found there's a good market locally for formatting books for print, something I used to do a lot of, but I ran into a problem.

In 6.0, when I printed a book file with 5.5" x 8.5" to PDF  with crop marks, I found the print size was not accurate, and was in fact 5.2" x 8.3" between the crop marks. I read online that this was a known bug in 6.0, so I just bought a subscription to 2015, and installed it. While the setup is a bit different, it's enough like 6.0 that I didn't feel baffled, but my PDFs with printer's marks are still about 3.7% small, and submissions to Amazon CreateSpace complain about those borders.

Does anyone have any experience with this? (I hope I found the right forum, but none of the choices seemed to apply)(Hmmm, I also don't see any place to enter a user name)

[Arnis_Gubins]

You found the right forum.

In FM2015, it is recommended to use the SaveAsPDF option. What joboption are you selecting and are you selecting the RGB or CMYK option?

How are you creating the PDF? What is your printer instance when you create the output? What sheet size are you specifying for your output?

How are you measuring the size of the page between the cropmarks, i.e. physically printing or using Acrobat's tools or...?

I don't use FM's cropmarks, but rather add those in the PDF using other tools (Quite Imposing and/or Enfocus PitstopPro). However, I've not found the specified page sizes coming out of FM to be incorrect.

[Winfried Reng]

Hi,

What did you measure?

The size in the PDF or the size after you printed the PDF?

If you measured the size after you printed, then I assume that you had selected "Fit" instead of "Actual Size" in the Print dialog in the Page Sizing area.

This would cause the symptom which you described.

Best regards

Winfried

[WinsorNewton7]

Ok, answering Arnis first, I'm not sure of the joboption selection, but since the document is black and white, I hadn't paid attention to the RGB or CMYK choice. I was creating the PDF by selecting Adobe PDF as the printer, with Western registration marks set in the FrameMaker print window. My measurement was by printing the resultant PDF file at Actual Size, and measuring with a ruler between the crop marks on paper.

Through more Googling of the problem, I read that one user advised to never set the Generate Adobe Data flag in the FrameMaker print window (I was never clear what that setting bought me, anyway) and lo, my printed hardcopy now measures precisely 5.5" and 8.5" between the crop marks. There is dancing in the streets

When I create graphics, like book covers, with printer's marks, Illustrator gives me a very broad range of control over printers' marks, as opposed to the simple Tombo/Wester/Non choice in FrameMaker or Pdf Printer setup. As far as I can find, or know, Frame still does not extend that control.

[Arnis_Gubins]

FYI, the RGB vs CMYK routes do use different headers and affect how the PDF is created. Some sizing issues (albeit for larger sheets) and font issues come up depending upon which route is chosen.

The Distiller joboptions do affect the output, but do not affect the specified sizes of the output. I would recommend that you pay attention to these and select the most appropriate one for your intended output target.

The Generate Acrobat Data just enables the interactivity and other features (Bookmarks, links, form fields, metadata, etc.) in the PDF when you print to the Adobe PDF printer instance. This option is automatically enabled in the SaveAsPDF option. It should not make any difference in the sizing of the output.

You are correct about the lack of depth in the FM printer's marks controls. They're either on or off as Tombo or Western.

[WinsorNewton7]

Just as a followup, the publisher CreateSpace's acceptance software, according to a tech rep, "doesn't like crop marks", and bounced my client's submission, on an 8.5"x11" PDF page with crop marks to 5.5"x8.5". He didn't say how they handled bleeds (although he asked is I had any content going to the page edge), but  simply submitting with 5.5"x8.5" PDF pages worked fine.

That's good to know, because I've got a few CreateSpace submission jobs in the queue.