Quark Forums

When I export a layout as a PDF from Quark 6.1, the trim box in my final PDF is the same size as the media box. Actually all of the PDF boxes are the same size as the media box.

Is there a way for the trim box to use the registration mark information from my Quark file for its offset coordinates?

I can change my trim box with PitStop or the Prinergy geometry editor plug-in for Acrobat. I'm just curious if there is way to do it from within Quark.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Jeff

I would have thought you could manually set the page size both horizontal and vertical when you use the print dialogue to create a postscript to distill. As long as within this page size it is centred as most output devices prefer this and very often require it, I know the Brisque and preps it is easier with centred PDFs. Not sure of another way to do it really as most applications tend to cut the page off at the trim marks.

I guess another way would be to set up an action for acrobat to crop your pages down. The information as far as I know is still there in the pdf to uncrop if necessary. If you use this method you may need to make the company outputting the pdfs that they are cropped or be aware yourself as some rips use the hidden data and some don't.

Hope that helps

When I make a Postscript file, either by printing and saving as a file or having my Quark PDF preferences set up to save the file for later Distilling, and run it through Distiller, my trim box is fine and the media box is large enough to show my crop marks, registration marks, and bleeds. We are running these pages through Prinergy so having the correct trim coordinates is very important.

One of our customers would like to use the Jaws PDF capabilities built-in to Quark 6 instead of the Postscript then Distill method to make a PDF. Normally we recommend the PS then Distill method, but after comparing PDFs of the same pages made with Distiller with PDFs straight out of Quark I feel fairly comfortable recommending using Quark. I just have to figure out this trim box dilemma first.

Hi, Jeff,

What do you mean by "trim box" and "media box"?

If I understand correctly, you want to create a PDF that's the size of your final trim, without crop marks showing ("use the registration mark information from my Quark file for its offset coordinates").

When you Print to File in XPress, choose "Custom" and input your final document/trim size (Setup tab). In the main dialog, turn off your crop marks. You will get a PDF that's exactly the size of your trim size, with all page elements accurately placed.

If you need the crops to show (like the poster using the Brisque) simply make the document size in the Setup tab 1.25"-1.5" larger than your actual document, and turn your cropmarks on (whether it's 1.25" or 1.5" depends on what your crop mark offset is set to). You can check whether or not the doc appears "centered" in the Preview tab.

Am I undestanding your question correctly?

peace,
Linda 8)

Hi Linda,

PDFs are made up of different "boxes". There is a Media box, which represents the paper size you are using. The Trim box represents your document size. The Bleed box, of course, represents your bleed info. Crop box = cropping of the PDF if there is any. And finally there is the Art box which contains the content of the PDF, images text etc. All of these boxes can have different sizes and are invisible unless you are viewing the PDF in Acrobat and you are using a page geometry editor or a plug-in like PitStop.

So, for example, if my document/trim size in Quark is 8 X 10.875 I will usually set my paper/media box size to 9.5 X 12 when I am making a Postscript file so that all my marks will show up.

When I make a PDF using the Postscript then Distill method, based on the example above, my media box size is 9.5 X 12 and my Trim box size is 8 X 10.875 which is exactly what I want.

When I export directly from Quark all of my boxes are the same size which is the final size as my PDF.

We recently switched from a Brisque to a Prinergy workflow. Prinergy is PDF based so all files that are brought into this worfkflow for loose proof output, imposition and plating are converted to PDFs either by Prinergy (in the case of PS, EPS, DCS files etc.) or as native PDFs. If the native PDFs do not have the correct trim box size set within the file the trim size has to be set manually with the Creo page geometry editor plug-in or through Prinergy. This is something that is very easy to do, but it adds an extra step to the process.

Whew!

Sorry if I went into too much detail on this one.

On a lighter note, if anyone has made it this far, what the heck is the SOFA? If you guys really need one I can probably pick one up at a garage sale this weekend.
:P

I will probably try asking this on some of the PDF forums as well.

Thanks again.

So, what if you Print to File and choose PDF (rather than postscript to later distill) rather than Export PDF (which uses Jaws rather than Distiller)?