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I have a large finished project created in InDesign. It's loaded with images and art. The text rag is lovely, the design is set. 200 pages at 9x9". Now, I've learned, I need to reduce the whole thing to 8.5 x 8.5". This project will go to press (and be an ebook) with an online company (who haven't been able to advise me). I'm wondering the best way to do this? The best and least time-consuming way to reduce the page size of the book. Also, I'm old school but have been told that my art does not have to be translated to CMYK in InDesign, and that it's less critical what size my images are placed at ...(some color is converted in placed images, with color I want to check and some isn't.) As long as the "effective ppi" is good, are those images okay for export? I expect that on my export to PDF, via Acrobat, I will use a CMYK recipe and the color gamut will be changed to CMYK, and that I'll also be able to reduce my file to 8.5x8.5" (the dimensions the online printer needs). Does anyone have any cautionary tales or words of wisdom on this one? I know that I can change the page size in InDesign...and that there are some different options there. My design is fixed, I don't want to deal with reflow. The main question is: how to best reduce a 9x9" document of multiple pages to 8.5x8.5"? Just to make things fun there are .125 bleeds...which I would increase to be okay with the reduction in page size...general shrinkage. Looks like the reduction is 94.44444. The second question is: Okay to let Acrobat convert the color gamut? Sizes okay if in the effective ppi range that they should be? Thank you so much for your expertise on this.
Hi eahuffman,
I think you will find all answers in this thread from yesterday:
Adjust page format while PDF export
Rheinlaender, Mar 22, 2021
https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign/adjust-page-format-while-pdf-export/m-p/11916240#M419224
Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( ACP )
https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/how-to/change-page-size.html
The above link maybe be some help.
As far as the second question:
I create mostly for print, but I have found that I see a color change when converting to cmyk . So I do not convert to cmyk in my pdf stage. I like to have the customer approve the colors as they will appear when printed. I find RGB is just so much more vibrant.
So eahuffman,
we now have four basic options to reduce page size:
[1] Export your PDF and then reduce the page size with Acrobat Pro's preflight functionality.
You may have to learn something new and do some tests to make that work for you.
[2] Print to a PostScript file with 94.44 % scaling; 94.44444 % will not work, because you can only type two digits after the dot. You have to install a special PPD file for this to get all necessary options.
Distill the PostScript file to PDF. You have t
...Well, that's good news! Thanks for that.
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Hi eahuffman,
I think you will find all answers in this thread from yesterday:
Adjust page format while PDF export
Rheinlaender, Mar 22, 2021
https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign/adjust-page-format-while-pdf-export/m-p/11916240#M419224
Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( ACP )
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https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/how-to/change-page-size.html
The above link maybe be some help.
As far as the second question:
I create mostly for print, but I have found that I see a color change when converting to cmyk . So I do not convert to cmyk in my pdf stage. I like to have the customer approve the colors as they will appear when printed. I find RGB is just so much more vibrant.
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So eahuffman,
we now have four basic options to reduce page size:
[1] Export your PDF and then reduce the page size with Acrobat Pro's preflight functionality.
You may have to learn something new and do some tests to make that work for you.
[2] Print to a PostScript file with 94.44 % scaling; 94.44444 % will not work, because you can only type two digits after the dot. You have to install a special PPD file for this to get all necessary options.
Distill the PostScript file to PDF. You have to know Acrobat Distiller and you have to do some special settings to make this work. All color will be converted to CMYK with this process, all transparency will be flattened. See arguments against that workflow in the thread I have linked above.
[3] Export to PDF with PDF/X-4, no downsampling of images, no color conversion. Bleed should be included.
Do a new non-facing pages document with page size 8.5" x 8.5"; place all the PDF pages scaled. A script will help with that. Export your production PDF from that new document.
[4] Use InDesign's Adjust Layout feature to reduce page size and contents.
Depending on the version of InDesign this could be the simplest workflow. Make sure that texts do not reflow. That could happen with border cases or rounding errors with pagination. The more if you are using Optical Kerning with your texts!
FWIW: I would prefer [3]. Why not [1] ? Because I did not do enough tests with Acrobat to tell if there are any issues with using Acrobat's Preflight for this task.
All other issues with doing the final production PDFs depend on the guide lines of your printers for this particular print job. Like the PDF standards, e.g. PDF/X-1a or PDF/X-4, color conversions, tolerated effective PPI etc.pp.
Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( ACP )
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I'll just mention my own (not free) QuickResize script, which often does a much more accurate job than InDesign's Adjust Layout feature.
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I ended up resizing the pages in InDesign...it means that now my “paragraph style sheets” no longer function as they once did. All the text shrunk to slightly weird sizes, text is 12.6/14.9, which is fine, but if I tried to apply the style sheet I get the unreduced, original size. I can't do global changes to the formatted/tagged text. But that’s okay. Oddly, though I reduced all my files by the same amount one file had a slightly different font reduction size...off by .1 pt. So that was amusing. Thank you all for your help. All good ideas. I'm happy to be part of this forum.
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All the text shrunk to slightly weird sizes, text is 12.6/14.9, which is fine, but if I tried to apply the style sheet I get the unreduced, original size.
By @eahuffman
You can click into the newly-sized type and choose Redefine Style from the fly-out, then Option-click on the style name to remove the local formatting. That will make your 12.6/14.9 the new original size.
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Well, that's good news! Thanks for that.
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Okay, of course. I do know that. I was noting that it doesn't happen automatically. It's a fair amount of work to go in manually and adjust all of the paragraph style sheets that are affected. Thanks for your response.