Cropping PDF in Acrobat or Pitstop

Tech

Well-known member
Hi All,
This question has come up on various times for us, I know and confirm cropping in Acrobat is not a permanent change. It is in fact more like masking out unwanted areas. That said, does Pitstop function the same? (we don't have Pitstop)

We need to supply web division with bookmarked PDF and cropped without trim marks. The issue is that we often received old/new press-ready PDFs that already has trim marks created, ideally, we like to remove those trim marks and not just masking it out.

Any suggestion is appreciated. Thank you.
 
Re: Cropping PDF in Acrobat or Pitstop

Place the PDF into a new inDesign document the size you want it to be.
Export to PDF - with "Crop to data frames" checked and the settings you need.

MSD
 
Re: Cropping PDF in Acrobat or Pitstop

> {quote:title=Tech wrote:}{quote}
> The issue is that we often received old/new press-ready PDFs that already has trim marks created,
>

Then the investment in PitStop will pay itself off in no time....


Honestly, I don't understand how *any* publisher can compete these days without some type of PDF editor. It's as vital as Photoshop.

just my 2 cents..
 
Re: Cropping PDF in Acrobat or Pitstop

> {quote:title=WharfRat wrote:}{quote}
> Place the PDF into a new inDesign document the size you want it to be.
> Export to PDF - with "Crop to data frames" checked and the settings you need.
>
> MSD

Thank you, I'll try this out.
 
Re: Cropping PDF in Acrobat or Pitstop

> {quote:title=gig0 wrote:}{quote}
> > {quote:title=Tech wrote:}{quote}
> > The issue is that we often received old/new press-ready PDFs that already has trim marks created,
> >
>
> Then the investment in PitStop will pay itself off in no time....
>
>
> Honestly, I don't understand how *any* publisher can compete these days without some type of PDF editor. It's as vital as Photoshop.
>
> just my 2 cents..

Next time, try to understand what the question is and answer it before you go off tangent.

FYI, publishers are content providers and that's how we stay competitive, having a PDF editor DOESN"T make great books nor sell them. Maybe you like to explain it to my boss why it's important to have Pitstop just to remove trim marks for another division...out of his budget too?

Edited by: Tech on Nov 19, 2007 12:11 AM
 
Re: Cropping PDF in Acrobat or Pitstop

On a similar note, when one deletes pages in a PDF, the file size doesn't seem to change.

Is there a way to tell Acrobat to get rid of any resources/pics/fonts etc. that are not being used in the PDF after pages have been deleted?
 
Re: Cropping PDF in Acrobat or Pitstop

If you do a File->Save As, Acrobat will remove all unused information in
the PDF (aka garbage collection).

File->Save, however, is designed as a "fast save" and does not do so.

Leonard
 
Re: Cropping PDF in Acrobat or Pitstop

Ah, yes, that works; thanks! Nice and simple solution there. :)

gig0: FYI, publishers also seem to have a short temper, eh?
 
Re: Cropping PDF in Acrobat or Pitstop

Hey, Tech,

Whoa, there. gig0 is right. If you're working without PitStop then you have "one hand tied behind your back".

With PitStop you can select the crop marks and delete them.

rich
 
Re: Cropping PDF in Acrobat or Pitstop

You can also do this with Acrobat 8's Object Touchup Tool as well.

Just select the object (or drag a selection rectangle for a group of
objects) and then hit delete.

Leonard
 
Re: Cropping PDF in Acrobat or Pitstop

I'm not disagreeing with the functions and importance of PitStop. It's gig0's tone that bother me without fully understanding the situation. If you speak to publishers, you'll be hard to convince any of them in acquiring it. They see PitStop as prepress software, and that is not the business they are in. I deal with designer files everyday and PDFs created in-house won't need any editorial changes using PitStop. We rather update original layout files and generate new PDFs.

The situations where PitStop will be helpful for us is only when we are dealing with external PDFs that we didn't create ourselves. Even so, the need to remove crop marks has been few and far in between up to this point in time.

While we are at this, I did installed a demo of PitStop, am I crazy to find the cropping tool a bit confusing to use? Why the use of X-Y axis as to crop a page? How do you determine the X-Y axis accurately? Using guides?

Thanks.
 
Re: Cropping PDF in Acrobat or Pitstop

> {quote:title=leonardr wrote:}{quote}
> You can also do this with Acrobat 8's Object Touchup Tool as well.
>
> Just select the object (or drag a selection rectangle for a group of
> objects) and then hit delete.
>
> Leonard

Thanks Leo, but we need to have the correct trim size as well not simply deleting trim marks.
 
Re: Cropping PDF in Acrobat or Pitstop

We work with many very large publishers who ALL use Pitstop. They may
be content companies, but most would realize that if their delivered
product in in PDF format or uses PDF as an intermediate format to
printing, that they would require sophisticated tools for working
with PDF.

David Wolfe
 
Re: Cropping PDF in Acrobat or Pitstop

Hi David,
Are we talking about full PDF workflow publishers here? Are they using PitStop only to preflight or actually does more with it? If so, what's your role as prepress/vendor to them? Does your sales team slap your publishers with higher quote fees for badly prepare PDFs? If so, that alone is a good reason why ALL your large publishers invest in PitStop.

I hate to say this but having a piece of software isn't the same as using it to it's full capabilities. Just because designers have entire Adobe CS suite, doesn't mean they all know how to create a masterpiece painting using Photoshop.

Anyway, I generally find this forum to be helpful and appreciate the help I receive here, I'm not here to argue with anyone. I'm offended when someone tells me what seems to be obvious and true when we all know that isn't always the case.
 
Re: Cropping PDF in Acrobat or Pitstop

Yes Tech. Pitstop's pretty much a down-stream fixer; for PDFs created elsewhere...with problems. I guess you're talking about creating a new Media Box, so that the PDFs are gonna "sit right", where you want them to be. The media Box is what our RIP "sees". Pitstop's Crop Tool allows you to define the new Media Box and "zap" all the stuff outside it. It's a great Tool and we'd be lost without it at times. A bit clunky, but you get used to it.
Bear in mind you can re-define the Art,Trim and Bleed boxes as well with it..
There other ways to achieve that, as outlined, but PSP just does it well, at a price.
 
Re: Cropping PDF in Acrobat or Pitstop

Tech, having been in a publishing environment you're right we did have other things to focus on. Like publishing the books. Which wouldn't really be possible without the support of advertising. And considering what general crud people send as advertisements PitStop becomes a necessity to get those ads into a printable condition. Thinking of PitStop as a "prepress" tool is a very small minded way of looking at it. Its usefulness casts a much wider net than "prepress" for printers.

Have you looked into the cost savings of doing "prepress" in house rather than paying over inflated per hour prices? It is pretty substantial.

Regarding the cropping tool, it is a bit confusing at first. But it extremely powerful. Especially with the ability to save cropping templates for frequently used sizes/configurations.
 
Re: Cropping PDF in Acrobat or Pitstop

Hi Matt,
Believe me, I'm not disagreeing on the usefulness of PitStop downstream on fixing finalized PDF files. Perhaps I'm not using the right words here, I have always work at content provider's end. This is prepress/production on publisher's side and everything I touch are upstream-original designer files.

It's my job is to ensure what leaves our house are 100% press-ready. No IFs or BUTs, if our vendor tells us something is not right, they kick it back to us for fixing. We do not expect our vendors to retouch or modify our files in any form or shape without our permission.

We are not yet in a full PDF workflow, though we are slowly adapting it. Which is partially why if you read my other posts in this new forum and prior one, most of my responses often reflects publisher' side of the experience rather than downstream.

Yes, to think of PitStop as downstream/prepress only is narrow-minded, but can you honestly see my current workflow have more usage for it aside from preflight and cropping? Considering most if not all edit/image changes will be on original files?

When David stated his clients have PitStops, the first thing that comes to mind is are they being push to acquire the software because they know what they are doing or because everyone else has it so they need it too or their vendors are penalizing them for silly final PDF file mistakes? There is a whole monetary side of this story that we are not discussing here.

I know one of our subsidiary company has acquire 5-6 copies of PitStop since last year... they still make a crap load of mistakes every week to drive the production manager and his vendors crazy. In one instance, they included RGB color images in a PDF when it's a two color job and then wonders what's wrong with their files. You think PitStop will save them?
 
Re: Cropping PDF in Acrobat or Pitstop

> When David stated his clients have PitStops, the first thing that
> comes to mind is are they being push to acquire the software
> because they know what they are doing or because everyone else has
> it so they need it too or their vendors are penalizing them for
> silly final PDF file mistakes? There is a whole monetary side of
> this story that we are not discussing here.

Actually, our clients have pushed all of their vendors to adopt
Pitstop Server. It's not specifically because of surcharges. It's
because of time. Our clients (educational publishers) are on very,
very tight deadlines. There is no time to correct mistakes that get
out the door. And there is no time to manually make many versions of
PDF for different purposes. Pitstop Server allows them and their
vendors to get their PDFs right before they go to the printer, and to
make one PDF that can be processed into many different versions.

> I know one of our subsidiary company has acquire 5-6 copies of
> PitStop since last year... they still make a crap load of mistakes
> every week to drive the production manager and his vendors crazy.
> In one instance, they included RGB color images in a PDF when it's
> a two color job and then wonders what's wrong with their files. You
> think PitStop will save them?

Only if they correctly configure it for your product/workflow and
then properly use it.

David
 
Re: Cropping PDF in Acrobat or Pitstop

You mention that you want to provide the web division a PDF - what is the purpose of this new version of the PDF ? I ask, as when you mentioned book marks - this may involved more than using applications such as PitStop or some Acrobat Plug-in. For example, if this PDF you are converting is a "designed and ready for print Production" PDF - and you are tasked to make an eBook to run on Amazon Kindle or the Sony eBook reader, you may need to add (or generated an eternal) metadata file - culd you share more about what you are trying to do ?

For more on adding bookmarks ;

http://www.acrobatusers.com/articles/2007/02/bookmark_options/

one can delete all objects outside the trimbox using Enfocus PitStop Professional - I am not that familiar with 8 or its method to remove the portion of the image that bleed outside the trim box.

You might consider setting up a Javascript to do conversions - if you have a large volume of PDF files to convert regularly. I use Windjack - Thom is has MAD java skills -

http://www.acrobatusers.com/tech_corners/javascript_corner/tips/2006/page_bounds/

or contact me directly off line

Michael Jahn
Slightly used PDF Evangelist
[email protected]
 

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