Export to pdf a4 > a5 (smaller paper size)

[Bas-B]

Hi everybody,

I have made an brochure of 25 pages in Illustrator in a a4 dimension (letter in USA), now the client wish to have it in a5 (half letter) can I export it to a smaller paper size pdf, or do I have to make a complety new project with smaller artboards?

[Jacob Bugge]

Bas-B,

The client can print it at A5, even when it is created as A4, by setting the paper size in Reader/Acrobat.

If either of you have Acrobat, you should be able to change the (paper) size in File>Page Setup and save the document with that setting.

[Bas-B]

`Thank you Jacob, but it has to be printed/pressed by a proffesional printer/publisher.. (uhm i don't know if this is clear, in holland we call it a drukkerij ) to make a few proffesional brochure.

So the client will not print it himself one time with a small printer.

[Jacob Bugge]

Bas-B,

The drukker will also be able to do it, and has probably seen worse.

[Monika Gause]

In case this is an online print shop, they just won't accept the document.

The preferred solution should be to reduce the size in Acrobat.

Another one to print the PDF.

You would get into trouble with bleed.

You might get into trouble with image quality (in case there are raster images in the brochure)

Text size might also be an issue.

[philipking]

Re-sizing in Acrobat would seem ideal if possible, but I can’t see how to do it (on a Mac using Acrobat XI). But there are various online services which offer to scale an uploaded PDF for you. Google will find them for you.

A4 scales nicely to A5 without changing proportions, so save the original A4 document as PDF and then import the pages into an A5 InDesign document, or another Illustrator document, taking account of bleed, of course. I just found this script for InDesign which looks useful, though I’ve not tried it.

However, as others have said, any print house will take this in their stride, and with respect to Monika, I've sent A-sized artwork to online printers and they've not had a problem scaling to another A size, though I accept not all printers will be as flexible.

The beauty of A-sizes is that they maintain proportion from size to size, so that (approximately) A5 is 71% of A4 which is 71% of A3, etc. and conversely A4 is 141% of A5, etc.