Layout Department

Resizing

To start, in Pages there are two options for the default document sizing (what happens when you drag a PDF of your pages into a layout you’ve made). It will either:

  1. Use PDF size, when it’s less than the Page Size Max (and the PDF’s pages fit fully on the space in the page grid layout), otherwise it will shrink the content to fit
  2. Scale to fit – where the PDF page will shrink or grow to fill the Page Size Max.

“Use PDF Size” is the default in Settings, you can also change it to always default to “Scale to fit” if you prefer.

Resizing the Trim, Bleed, and Document

In Pages, you can resize the Trim Size, Bleed, and Document (original PDF) sizes together or independently. These also change the location of the Printer’s Marks for trim (and bleed, if specified).

You can edit the text areas to set the desired dimensions. When you’re active in a text area, you’ll see what you’re editing, highlighted on the page. Click the highlighted rectangle to activate drag handles, and use your mouse to drag to resize. Or hover the are you want, and click to get the drag handles to resize.

Lock icons will lock the specified dimensions you’ve set.

Link icon (the chain or broken chain, if unlinked) will make it so that editing one dimension will automatically update the related dimensions. For example, you can have all the sides of the page have the same bleed, or unlink to set different bleed.

Resizing the Trim Size

The Trim Size is the final size of your book. Click the page to edit, and it will pop up in red, use the drag handles to adjust. Or edit the text boxes. If you unlink the aspect ratio, you’ll get extra drag handles to just make the trim size taller/shorter or change the width, independently of the other dimension.

Adding or changing the Bleed

Bleed is the area of the content in your PDF that extends past the trim line, so when you cut the pages down to size, any “full bleed” content will be cut neatly.

If the PDF you are working with specifies bleed in a way that Layout Department can recognize, it will be added here for you. You can also add bleed for a Booklet by typing the numbers for the bleed on the top, outer, and bottom edges. (And inner edge too, if you’re working with a Perfect Bound format.)

If you can’t get bleed to come up for drag and drop editing by clicking on it, you can right click and select Bleed from the menu. When you’re editing a bleed, drag the outer handle to expand the bleed without changing the trim size; or the inner handle to keep the Trim+Bleed the same, and resize the bleed while at the same time shrinking the trim size by the same amount.

Resizing the Document

The document size (your PDF) is highlighted in blue. You can unlink the Document from the Trim to resize the document independently, if you need.

Cropping

If you unlink the document size, and set the trim+bleed size smaller than the document, the document will be cropped to the trim+bleed size.

Some notes about resizing

Changing grid position and spacing

If you’ve resized your content to be smaller than the max page size allowed by your layout and format selections, you may want to edit the Grid Spacing or Grid Position.

Show metric for small numbers

People who use metric are lucky, but those of us who work in papers sized in inches are often dreading dealing with fractional inches… not fun. In the Settings Defaults section, if your Units are in inches, you’ll see an option to show smaller measurements in millimeters (mm). Check the ones you want.

Content Shift

While you’re resizing, you also may want to use the Content Shift to move the content on the page away from the spine (or towards the spine, with a negative number) – you can see the content move as you adjust.

Portrait and Landscape

Note that in the Impose sidebar, for Orientation, portrait and landscape refer to the max grid cell size that could be used for a given layout (number of pages per sheet side, arranged in rows and columns. By resizing, you can make a landscape trim-sized book/zine go on a portrait grid cell size, but this will not be the most efficient use of paper.

People using the free community edition of the app will see more limited resizing options than with the paid license: