Expert: Kevin Stohlmeyer - 11/2/2009

Question
Hi Kevin,
I am making a book and have designed each of the pages in Illustrator.  Each page is 5 x 7 and borderless.  It is now time for me to print my book and it is posing a bunch of different problems.  

First, while in illustrator each page appears to be the same size (I set the document size to 5x7) when I save the files as a PDF the size of the individual PDFs change.  The weird thing is, they change in different ways.  One page shrinks, one expands, another randomly turns to a landscape even though it is set up as a portrait...  I know that PDFs can sometimes get wacky, so I printed the files (adjusting my printing settings to page scaling: none, and borderless photo printing 5x7) but still all of the sizes are strange.

I am new to Illustrator (I have CS) and being that I am doing a lot of educated guessing I may be missing steps.  Can you think of anything I may not be doing?  Should I be printing from another file type?  I was googling about this and there was some mention of using a clipping mask to correct this.  I don't really know what that means or how to use it, but if you think that is the best way to correct this, let me know and I will take a tutorial.

Lastly, the book I am making is for a project and I need to get this done soon.  If it is going to be a nightmare to correct this on my own I may consider using someone else to print this for me.  If you have any suggestions for online printers, please let me know.

Thanks for your help!
Kalin

Answer
Hi Kalin,

What could be causing your pages to be different sizes is if you have images or something else bleeding off the edge of the pages.

You should be saving these pages as PDFs. But before you do, you need to set up crop marks. Draw a rectangle the size of your page (5x7") then while its selected, go to object>crop>Make. This should keep your page sizes the same.

Next, when you save as a PDF (do not print to a PDF use Save as), be sure to use "Press Quality" preset and do not change any of the compression settings. This should allow your PDFs to export out cleanly. PDFs should never be "wacky".

As far as printers go, Vistaprint.com is ok otherwise for books lulu.com is great.

Thanks

Kevin