Exporting or Saving an Artboard with different dimenions

[geoffreyp37178285]

I am on a Mac, with Illustrator 28.2

I have a file with multiple artboards. Some of them are intended to be thumbnail views of the main artwork. I would like to save them as PDFs as say US legal size, but they are saved at the full poster size. I can't see a way to change the saved size. Ican't see an easy way to change the size using export-as. I have tried using Mac Preview and Adobet Reader Pro as well but can't see how to change the dimensions of a PDF.

Any ideas?

[Rene Andritsch]

As a workaround you could place all your posters in InDesign where you have pages that are the sizes of your intended output and then export a PDF from InDesign.

[Ton Frederiks]

You can change the artboards to whatever size you want.

Make a copy of your file.

Click Rearrange Artboards (icon lower left in the Artboards panel)

Set a large space between them so that they will not overlap when a new page size is chosen.

Double click the page icon for an artboard in the Artboards panel and select or specify a page size (I did it from the center).

Repeat for all artboards.

[Kurt Gold]

In Acrobat you can scale pages to custom sizes with a preflight operation.

In Illustrator you may do it with the Artboard tool while the Scale Content with Artboard option is turned on in the preferences.

[Rene Andritsch]

@Kurt Gold can you please show a screenshot where that preference is and which version of Illustrator you are using. I had a look twice but did not find it. Thanks! I saw a video on Youtube where there is a checkbox in the Properties Panel but this is not present in Illustrator 2024.

[Kurt Gold]

Rene, the option has to be set in the Illustrator Preferences file.

Replace

	/CropAreaPrefix {
		/MoveContentWithArtbrd 1
		/ShowFading 1
		/RealTimeFading 1
		/ScaleContentWithArtbrd 0

with

	/CropAreaPrefix {
		/MoveContentWithArtbrd 1
		/ShowFading 1
		/RealTimeFading 1
		/ScaleContentWithArtbrd 1

Note that currently it only works when scaling the artboards with the mouse.

[Rene Andritsch]

Ok, thank you. But this is nothing a regular user should have to do – or a beginner to the software. I hope this feature is soon reimplemented.

[geoffreyp37178285]

Thanks.
"Scale Content with Artboard option is turned on in the preferences"

where is that? I've looked and searched online but can't find it.

Also, I'd prefer a solution where I don't have to copy the artwork. It is likely to change after review by the printers, which means I have to repeat that operation. I'd rather multiple views onto the same artwork, each view scaled.

[Rene Andritsch]

@geoffreyp37178285 if it doesn’t have to be a PDF you can use the “Asset Export” Panel. In the JPG or PNG settings you can specify a width or height. The only thing you have to do before pulling your artwork into the panel is to group it (maybe also make sure you have a rectangle the size of the Artboard in the background that is grouped with your artwork).

[geoffreyp37178285]

Thanks. I had already trued "export as" but it doesn't have a final dimension option, only pixels-per-inch.

I think I am going to fall back on plan B, which is to re-open the PDFs in preview and resave them to the desired dimensions. A waste of time but straightforward

[Rene Andritsch · Accepted solution]

I think you might be faster in InDesign. Depending on how many posters you have, just create a document with X pages in letter size and place your Illustrator file there. On placing you can show the import options and get all artboards imported. This way you dont have to change anything. In InDesign you could even change your page sizes and the placed artwork would resize with the page. IF you want and you need that often I could record a short tutorial for you. You can direct message me about it.

[geoffreyp37178285]

Thank you, the InDesign place method works. I found the Place Options, and am just placing the single artboard layer that I need each time. It does pin the file name, but I can deal with that

[geoffreyp37178285]

Well, the InDesign method worked in theory, but failed after a few pages due to the size of the images. It beach-balled continuously. So I completed the project manully using Preview. Oh well.

Thanks for all your suggestions

[Rene Andritsch]

@geoffreyp37178285 can you just tell me the size of the images. I would like to investigate if InDesign has problems placing those, as you say that it was beachballing. Thanks!

[geoffreyp37178285]

The file size is 218mb


In any case I gave up and used Preview

Cheers
Geoff

Sent from my iPhone

[Rene Andritsch · Accepted solution]

Ah ok, I thought more of the dimensions. As you said they were big posters. 218 MB is not shockingly big but maybe InDesign tried to render the Previews at “Best Quality” which might have slowed it down. Most important thing you got it done in some sort of way. If you have to do it again give it another try in InDesign with theses settings (in the Object Menu):

I think it would be the fastest workflow for now. Hopefully the Illustrator feature to scale content with artboards comes back at some point.