Help with resizing

[jen]

Greetings!

My employer recently purchased the pitstop server/Switch combination. I love it so far, but am having trouble resizing jobs properly. What I need it to do is the following (pitstop action):

1. Remove crop marks (which I can use the action already in pitstop for.)
2. Cut off any bleed (if there is any) at the trim edge.
3. Resize the content so it will fit in a 8.5 x 11 page with .5 inch white border. This has to be variable because content is anywhere from 11x17 to 6x9. I would prefer if it didn't enlarge, just shrink proportional.

I have tried this several ways, but centering content doesn't work as many of the files have invisible words or bleed that extends too far to make centering work. I have used several of the tools, and I get close but not quite there. I am probably missing something obvious. Any ideas?

Thanks much!
Jen

 

[jen]

Does anyone have a starting point at least?

 

[abc]

Will post some ideas when back in the office tomorrow

 

[jen]

Thank you!

 

[abc]

I sent you a Private message

 

[Printing Wholesale]

Hi Jen,

If you use/have InDesign, it would be very easy to 'place' the pdf and resize/crop to the dimensions you require.

 

[abc]

Not sure that would work in this case as it's running in a Switch workflow so it needs to be automated.

 

[jen]

Yep, automation is key to this project. =)

 

[Saulius]

Hi Jen

we do a lot of softcover books scaling. Your workflow is similar to ours with the exception of the one step. After removing of original crop marks we run the pitstop action which puts crop marks to the document so far where is a little probability of any hidden text. For instance, 1000 mm out of the trimbox. In this way we have the document's content framed in equal boxes and pitstop resizes and centers all pages equally.


Saulius Stonys
Extra prepress