Adjust page size of Aperture photo book

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Level 1

25 points

Adjust page size of Aperture photo book

Recently I created a book of pictures from one of our local parks using Aperture phot book. I showed it to the manager of the gift shop at the park and she would like to stock it. Good news but I can't afford to continue printing these books through Apple so I've started looking at short-run book printers and the price per unit becomes much more attractive. The problem I'm encountering is that most of these companies like standard size books: 5.5"x8" or 6"x9". The book I prepared using Aperture is 8"x6". So, I figured I could easily expand the page size to accommodate one of the standard sizes but there doesn't appear to be any way to do this. Then I thought I could export the file as PDF and adjust the margins in some other program. But which one?

Suggestions anyone? Thanks.

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), iLife 11, Aperture 3.21

Posted on Mar 10, 2012 10:30 AM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

194,561 points

Mar 10, 2012 10:40 AM in response to alice_srq

Hello, Alice,

Wouldn't a "Custom Theme" suffice?

Change the Book Theme to Custom, and then define a new layout, setting page size and margins.

The draw back is, that by switching the theme you may loose some texts, so keep a pdf of the original book for reference.

Tregards

Léonie

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Answer 2

alice_srq Author

Level 1

25 points

Mar 10, 2012 10:49 AM in response to léonie

Yes, custom would do if I had thought of it at the start. I duplicated the book, set the page sizes as I now know they should be using custom and it totally wreaks havoc with the book layout and loses the text entirely. I know that I could painstakingly remake the book but, needless to say, I much rather find a way to adjust the page size while retaining the current layout.

Thanks.

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

194,561 points

Mar 10, 2012 11:31 AM in response to alice_srq

You could try to scale the pdf-file of your book by printing the pdf to a custom page size (set to the dimensions you want) and set to "scale to fit" and set to "print to pdf".

That should rescale the pdf your book.

Regards

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Answer 4

Mar 10, 2012 11:35 AM in response to alice_srq

Some suggestions.

Redo the book. This is the only way you will be satisfied. IME, though "painstaking", re-creating existing work goes very quickly (you don't have to make any decisions -- it's work without thought).

A publisher might be able to print your book with the pages centered on whatever size stock they use.

You can resize PDFs. Google that or "scale PDF". The problem here is that resizing is sure to reduce the quality of the final print. How much? How much is OK?

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