Matching up print production trim with illustrator trim

[everythingwebbie]

Hi -  a while back I received the below reply to a query I had regarding printing issues around trim marks and how my document was bigger than what I had set in illustrator.

As I need to add marks when saving my PDFs in illustrator, and to avoid Acrobat increasing the size of my PDFs, how do I match up the trim marks in Print Production in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC?  Do I do this through Output Preview / Set Page Boxes.../ and then what comes next?

Thanks

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It looks like you are adding marks when saving your PDF, this will increase the size of your PDF and is to be expected. In Acrobat, you can use the Output Preview tool (Tools> Print Production> Output Preview) to show the invisible art, trim & bleed boxes, your trim box size should match the Illustrator Artboard size. To see your trim size in Acrobat, click on Set Page Boxes on the Output Preview tool and select Apply to Trim box, the trim size will appear in the preview window.  

[Monika Gause]

You can't adjust the size or position of automatically generated trim marks in Illustrator. If you want custom marks, then you have to draw them.

[Ton Frederiks]

If you need print marks, they have to go somewhere, so a larger area will be created to place them.

There is no way to have them without making the document larger.

[Monika Gause]

And also: talk to the printing service if the marks are needed at all. The information about blled and crop is inside the PDF. The printer doesn't necessarily need the marks. They will create their own.

[everythingwebbie]

THanks for your reply Monika.. 🙂

I don't think my question has been structured properly to receive the right answer i think.

So, I guess what I'm trying to find out, and it's probably staring me right in the face but I need some absolution to what I am trying to acheive... if I don't set  (or display) the print marks at all in illustrator, then will Acrobat display them correctly instead and will this avoid the document area being enlarged?

Thanks