Back

If your email is not recognized and you believe it should be, please contact us.

  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.Login

Converting existing 8.5 x 11 documents to 4.25 x 5.5

Tagged: ,

Return to Member Forum

  • Author
    Posts
    • July 11, 2013 at 5:32 am #34221
      tbone
      Member

      Can you tell me if there is an easy way to convert existing 8.5 x 11 InDesign documents to a smaller format(4.25 x 5.5)? The documents include numerous graphics (instruction manuals and parts books). I’m currently using CS4.

    • July 12, 2013 at 12:20 pm #34233
      Kelly Vaughn
      Participant

      It really depends on if you want your text to all stay the same size. In that case, you’ll need to add additional pages. Start with layout adjustment, change the page size, and then tweak from there.

      But if you just want them a smaller size, and all the content can stay the same on each page, just place the PDFs of the 8.5 x 11 files into the smaller 4.25 x 5.5 template.

    • July 22, 2013 at 6:11 am #34351
      tbone
      Member

      Kelly, Thanks for your solutions and so sorry for not responding sooner. Your comments have been very helpful. Again, Thanks!

      • July 30, 2013 at 1:55 am #34490
        Masood Ahmad
        Participant

        Hi Tbone,

        I think Kelly’s suggestion is a lengthy way to convert the document into half. The better solution for your problem is to Select all the objects/text etc on the page, Group it and then scale it down to 50%. You can repeat the steps on each page. In this way all the elements whether it is text or graphic or image will be proportionally reduced to 50%. Just make sure to lock the Scaling X and Y coordinates before making it 50%.

        Hope that will be easy !

    • July 30, 2013 at 5:06 am #34492
      tbone
      Member

      Masood,

      Thank you for your response. I hadn’t considered doing it that way, but that is an alternative solution I may consider. My print vendor has assured me that she can reduce the book size proportionately from a PDF. I haven’t seen a sample yet, so if she can’t, I will have to rely on one (or more) of the solutions that you and Kelly have provided. Thanks again for taking the time to respond!

    • July 30, 2013 at 10:49 am #34510
      Justin Sligh
      Member

      tbone,

      Depending on how these documents are reduced in size, you may notice issues with vector artwork that contains thin lines. Sometimes these lines are dropped and some times they are converted to the smallest printable width.

      Pay close attention to the digital proof.

      In addition to Kelly’s comment in regard to embedding PDFs, you could also embed the actual InDesign file. That way, if you made a change to the original InDesign file, you could easily update it within the links panel without exporting to PDF.

    • October 22, 2013 at 2:13 pm #65918
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Hi all. I am a fairly new user to Indesign (CS6) and I would like to know if this works for converting a book from 8.5×11″ to 6×9″?
      If yes, how would I go about it? That is, how do I know what the 6×9″ format looks like when scaling?

      Thanks so much,

      Caith

  • Author
    Posts
Viewing 5 reply threads
  • The forum ‘General InDesign Topics (CLOSED)’ is closed to new topics and replies.
Forum Ads