🚀 go-pugleaf

The problem with trying to distill multiple page sizes in a single .ps file is that your Distiller printer instance has to be set to the size of the largest page (17x11). All your pages will come out that size, including the 8.5x11 pages. After it's distilled you can then crop the smaller pages in Acrobat (tedious...).

If the Distiller printer instance is set to 8.5x11 paper size then Distiller will crop your 17x11 pages to the smaller size, and you can't "uncrop" to magically expose the missing bits.

The big caveat to remember here, though, is that Acrobat's cropping just affects the on-screen display in Acrobat -- it changes nothing about the way the pages actually print, in the above scenario they will still all print as if they were 17x11.

I believe that Pitstop or similar apps might be able to actually resize the pages (can anybody confirm?).

HOWEVER, and this is an even bigger concern: is this document going to be printed, either at a print shop or by the end-users? If so, beware that PDFs don't (and can't) contain any instructions to change the paper tray/bin for specific pages.

Some commercial print shops may be able to use various tools (depending on the output device) to assign specific pages to different printers, but of course this would all depend on the shop, their equipment, and on having this workflow setup with them in advance.

A more common scenario would be to have "placeholder" 8.5x11 pages in the main doc as indicators of where the large sheets are supposed to go and then create a separate PDFs for the large sheets. The printer then prints them separately and "tips in" the large sheets when the book goes through binding.

Sheila