is this the best way to use crop marks for printables to sell?

[TabulaRasa_]

Hi guys, ive been making planner printables with multiple size set ups and then copying and placing on US letter document and placing crop mark scripts and exporting to PDF for anyone to print out at home and cut and place in their planner. I am wanting to know is this the best method? Do i have to open another document and paste to make sure a certain planner spread has crop marks in the middle and say, is 4.65x7 but is printing on US letter?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I'm not clear why you need anything more complex than export to PDF with crop marks enabled. This creates a page image that will print on anything the end user has handy (printer, stock, etc.), with trim crops in place.

You could use more complex manual placement, with or without scripting, but I can't see a need to go that route.

[rob day · Accepted solution]

making planner printables with multiple size set ups and then copying and placing on US letter document 

Hi @TabulaRasa_ You could create custom sized pages to the size of each item, export the pages to PDF with crop marks and place the PDFs on your letter size document. Something like this:

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

If the goal is multiple print items on each page, this is the approach. But if it's one page/item, simply using a custom page size and exporting with crops turned on will automatically adapt to any print page size and layout. (Including, for example, Euro users printing to A4 instead of US Letter).

[TabulaRasa_]

Actually this will make things alot easier, thank you! im honestly looking for something less tideous. I tried it out and crop marks will work perfectly for one page printable for me but not two page printable. Any help? Below is what i did: I "placed" the pdf. It only gave me one page to place. The second picture is the orginal. And the 3rd picture is my goal, not mine. 

I exported the pdf with crop marks on instead of scripts. 

 Thanks for your help!

[rob day · Accepted solution]

When you Place check the Show Import Options in the place dialog, then you’ll get to option to place pages and set Crop To options:

[TabulaRasa_]

hey @rob day , i believe this is gonna work out! still gotta polish up. I placed the pdfs and they are a little blurry. Before i go, is there a way to fix this? Thanks so much for your help!

[rob day]

I placed the pdfs and they are a little blurry. Before i go, is there a way to fix this?

The PDF preview in InDesign is a proxy image, it shouldn’t affect the export out to the final PDF—try zooming in to a higher magnification.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

These are just blanks, for end users to print out, cut down and use, right? They don't need any interactive/form-fill features (that is, they're not meant to be live export from a working planner)?

Just set up a print page for each layout. I think trying to use one page layout and have it print for trim/cutdown in a variety of combinations is needlessly complex. The user can select whether they want to print out the one-up PDF or the two-up PDF, etc.

[TabulaRasa_]

Hi, yes this is for pdf print. Printable planner inserts. In the planner community its common to provide a two page pdf on one page to print. i dont know why. i guess we dont want to waste paper?? lol. But  You're right. it makes tons more sense just to create a printable on one page and let them decide. Some do that. But as a consumer id choose two pdf on one page. 

Just trying to find the best and fastest system.

Thanks!