Exporting PDF within the margins

[melaniec56477635]

Hello all, Is there a way to only export the image area within the margins.

We recently switched printers and they requested only the image area as the final export. All our templates are built to the paper size and we design within the margins, and export the whole page. My first fix was to change the document setup to the measurements of the image area and use no margins. But this makes viewing the facing pages difficult and it's also hard to see if a text box is slightly out of the print area. To help I set lock to guides, smart guides and check or uncheck facing pages to help when text boxes butt up.

Thank you for the help

[Mike Witherell]

It seems to me that the matter might be misunderstood. No one would ever require a document that way. Maybe they just mean to turn off the bleed and printer's marks? I don't know, but that doesn't sound sensible.

[John Mensinger]

"We recently switched printers and they requested only the image area as the final export."

Unfortunately, I'd say that indicates you need to swtich yet again.

PDF export is not selective in that way, and your options for making it work under such a silly demand are limited:

• Change the page setup to effectively 'clip' the page size to the current margins
• Crop in Acrobat post-export

[Bill Silbert]

I think what is needed here is additional communication with your printer. As Mike and John have said this is not a reasonable request for the printer to make. Find out specifically what the printer actually needs in order to export your job and why they need it. When dealing with printers it is essential to get every bit of information they have so that you can prepare your work for output in a way that is absolutely "bulletproof". Communication is at times the most important step in any production. 

[melaniec56477635]

Thank you, and I totally agree with each of you. I have a work around for the time being. So I do have one other question. Is there away keep text and image boxes from "bleeding" off the page. Currently using snap and smart guides to help, but those aren't fool proof, when moving quickly.

[John Mensinger]

I may not fully understand the question, but objects are positioned by you and will stay where you put them, right or wrong. There's not really any "automatic" way to prevent them from being anywhere in particular.

[melaniec56477635]

Sorry, I'll try and make it clear.

After a box is drawn is there a way to besure you can't drag it off the page. Keeping it traped inside the documents borders.

Thanks again for the replies, this has been a fun one.

[John Mensinger]

No, there is not a feature that imposes limits in that way.

[rob day]

Are you sure they are not confusing you the wrong term? Maybe by margin they mean the area that the Printer Marks occupy?

In this example you obviously couldn't remove the margin or bleeds because they are both needed, but you could export with no printer marks and remove the space outside of the bleed:

[Migintosh]

 I'm not sure that it's totally unreasonable, but could be a communication problem. Suppose (for example) that the finished piece will be 8.5x11 with 1/2" margins on all sides, and that there shouldn't be anything within the margins. Here's an example where two text frames are completely within the margins:

…but because of the stroke and drop shadow, it's leaking into the margins. If the printer had to fit this into the live area, it would either look like this:

…or would have to be reduced to fit. Setting aside whetheror not a "no copy in the margins" requirement is reasonable or not, but designing to the live area instead of the page size would alert the designer that if something is off the page, it won't be printed. Just my 2¢.

[melaniec56477635]

Is it possible to set up a document with crop marks so visually we'll have the extra room "margins" to layout the pages. Then export the files cropping the page down to size at the crop marks.

[John Mensinger]

Hmmm...the longer this goes, the more convoluted it seems to get because it's not clear whether we're all using the same terms in the same ways. So let's try it like this:

The Page - The actual physical media size; for this exercise, US letter, 8.5w x 11h:

The Margins - A designer-set distance from the edges of the page; here we'll say it's 1/2 (0.5) inch (in gray, outside the red margin guides) on all sides:

The Image Area - The area inside the margins (in yellow, inside the red margin guides), which in this case would measure 7.5w x 10h:

"we design within the margins"

Okay so there's no need to explore "bleed," presumably.

So using those definitions, your question:

"Is there a way to only export the image area within the margins."

No, PDF Export from InDesign exports the Page Size + bleed if specified. (It will also add to the media size for crop/printer's marks if specified.)

So, if the Image Area (yellow above) is really what your printer wants (although it makes little sense, and I strongly suspect that is not what they want), the way I'd do that is by cropping all pages down to that size in Acrobat, post-export.

[melaniec56477635]

This has been going on long, so long I'm on here trying to resolve their request. All the above is correct, except this is what they want. Our pages built to the image area only, not to the actual media size.

So this brings up a new question can Acrobat out crop?

[Migintosh]

Can you tell us the size of your page, margins, image area and the size of the pdf after export?

[Migintosh]

Another option that you may be more comfortable with would be to design to the page size (like you're doing now) and create a second document at the image area size. You can place the pages from the original into image frames on the pages of the smaller document. You can set the fitting to center within the image frames, and when you export to PDF, it will be the size of the image area only, and anything in the margins will be cropped out by the image frame and also by the smaller document size.

[melaniec56477635]

We just settled on going that route. Definitely extra workflow but, way easier then laying out pages with no margins. 

Thank you all

[John Mensinger]

"Definitely extra workflow..."

Crazy extra. Cropping the PDF would take a couple seconds.