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Printer marks and hairlines (Acrobat Pro)

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  1. Acrobat User Guide
  2. Introduction to Acrobat
    1. Access Acrobat from desktop, mobile, web
    2. What's new in Acrobat
    3. Keyboard shortcuts
    4. System Requirements
  3. Workspace
    1. Workspace basics
    2. Opening and viewing PDFs
      1. Opening PDFs
      2. Navigating PDF pages
      3. Viewing PDF preferences
      4. Adjusting PDF views
      5. Enable thumbnail preview of PDFs
      6. Display PDF in browser
    3. Working with online storage accounts
      1. Access files from Box
      2. Access files from Dropbox
      3. Access files from OneDrive
      4. Access files from SharePoint
      5. Access files from Google Drive
    4. Acrobat and macOS
    5. Acrobat notifications
    6. Grids, guides, and measurements in PDFs
    7. Asian, Cyrillic, and right-to-left text in PDFs
  4. Creating PDFs
    1. Overview of PDF creation
    2. Create PDFs with Acrobat
    3. Create PDFs with PDFMaker
    4. Using the Adobe PDF printer
    5. Converting web pages to PDF
    6. Creating PDFs with Acrobat Distiller
    7. Adobe PDF conversion settings
    8. PDF fonts
  5. Editing PDFs
    1. Edit text in PDFs
    2. Edit images or objects in a PDF
    3. Rotate, move, delete, and renumber PDF pages
    4. Edit scanned PDFs
    5. Enhance document photos captured using a mobile camera
    6. Optimizing PDFs
    7. PDF properties and metadata
    8. Links and attachments in PDFs
    9. PDF layers
    10. Page thumbnails and bookmarks in PDFs
    11. Action Wizard (Acrobat Pro)
    12. PDFs converted to web pages
    13. Setting up PDFs for a presentation
    14. PDF articles
    15. Geospatial PDFs
    16. Applying actions and scripts to PDFs
    17. Change the default font for adding text
    18. Delete pages from a PDF
  6. Scan and OCR
    1. Scan documents to PDF
    2. Enhance document photos
    3. Troubleshoot scanner issues when scanning using Acrobat
  7. Forms
    1. PDF forms basics
    2. Create a form from scratch in Acrobat
    3. Create and distribute PDF forms
    4. Fill in PDF forms
    5. PDF form field properties
    6. Fill and sign PDF forms
    7. Setting action buttons in PDF forms
    8. Publishing interactive PDF web forms
    9. PDF form field basics
    10. PDF barcode form fields
    11. Collect and manage PDF form data
    12. About forms tracker
    13. PDF forms help
    14. Send PDF forms to recipients using email or an internal server
  8. Combining files
    1. Combine or merge files into single PDF
    2. Rotate, move, delete, and renumber PDF pages
    3. Add headers, footers, and Bates numbering to PDFs
    4. Crop PDF pages
    5. Add watermarks to PDFs
    6. Add backgrounds to PDFs
    7. Working with component files in a PDF Portfolio
    8. Publish and share PDF Portfolios
    9. Overview of PDF Portfolios
    10. Create and customize PDF Portfolios
  9. Sharing, reviews, and commenting
    1. Share and track PDFs online
    2. Mark up text with edits
    3. Preparing for a PDF review
    4. Starting a PDF review
    5. Hosting shared reviews on SharePoint or Office 365 sites
    6. Participating in a PDF review
    7. Add comments to PDFs
    8. Adding a stamp to a PDF
    9. Approval workflows
    10. Managing comments | view, reply, print
    11. Importing and exporting comments
    12. Tracking and managing PDF reviews
  10. Saving and exporting PDFs
    1. Saving PDFs
    2. Convert PDF to Word
    3. Convert PDF to JPG
    4. Convert or export PDFs to other file formats
    5. File format options for PDF export
    6. Reusing PDF content
  11. Security
    1. Enhanced security setting for PDFs
    2. Securing PDFs with passwords
    3. Manage Digital IDs
    4. Securing PDFs with certificates
    5. Opening secured PDFs
    6. Removing sensitive content from PDFs
    7. Setting up security policies for PDFs
    8. Choosing a security method for PDFs
    9. Security warnings when a PDF opens
    10. Securing PDFs with Adobe Experience Manager
    11. Protected View feature for PDFs
    12. Overview of security in Acrobat and PDFs
    13. JavaScripts in PDFs as a security risk
    14. Attachments as security risks
    15. Allow or block links in PDFs
  12. Electronic signatures
    1. Sign PDF documents
    2. Capture your signature on mobile and use it everywhere
    3. Send documents for e-signatures
    4. About certificate signatures
    5. Certificate-based signatures
    6. Validating digital signatures
    7. Adobe Approved Trust List
    8. Manage trusted identities
  13. Printing
    1. Basic PDF printing tasks
    2. Print Booklets and PDF Portfolios
    3. Advanced PDF print settings
    4. Print to PDF
    5. Printing color PDFs (Acrobat Pro)
    6. Printing PDFs in custom sizes
  14. Accessibility, tags, and reflow
    1. Create and verify PDF accessibility
    2. Accessibility features in PDFs
    3. Reading Order tool for PDFs
    4. Reading PDFs with reflow and accessibility features
    5. Edit document structure with the Content and Tags panels
    6. Creating accessible PDFs
  15. Searching and indexing
    1. Creating PDF indexes
    2. Searching PDFs
  16. Multimedia and 3D models
    1. Add audio, video, and interactive objects to PDFs
    2. Adding 3D models to PDFs (Acrobat Pro)
    3. Displaying 3D models in PDFs
    4. Interacting with 3D models
    5. Measuring 3D objects in PDFs
    6. Setting 3D views in PDFs
    7. Enable 3D content in PDF
    8. Adding multimedia to PDFs
    9. Commenting on 3D designs in PDFs
    10. Playing video, audio, and multimedia formats in PDFs
    11. Add comments to videos
  17. Print production tools (Acrobat Pro)
    1. Print production tools overview
    2. Printer marks and hairlines
    3. Previewing output
    4. Transparency flattening
    5. Color conversion and ink management
    6. Trapping color
  18. Preflight (Acrobat Pro)
    1. PDF/X-, PDF/A-, and PDF/E-compliant files
    2. Preflight profiles
    3. Advanced preflight inspections
    4. Preflight reports
    5. Viewing preflight results, objects, and resources
    6. Output intents in PDFs
    7. Correcting problem areas with the Preflight tool
    8. Automating document analysis with droplets or preflight actions
    9. Analyzing documents with the Preflight tool
    10. Additional checks in the Preflight tool
    11. Preflight libraries
    12. Preflight variables
  19. Color management
    1. Keeping colors consistent
    2. Color settings
    3. Color-managing documents
    4. Working with color profiles
    5. Understanding color management

About printer marks in PDFs

When you prepare a document for print production, a number of marks are needed to help the print service provider align separation films for producing proofs, measure film for correct calibration and ink density, trim film to size, and so on. Printer marks indicate the boundaries of document boxes supported by Adobe PDF, such as trim boxes and bleed boxes.

You can add printer marks temporarily at print time using the Marks And Bleeds panel of the Advanced Print Setup dialog box, or you can embed printer marks in the file (and optionally in a layer) using the Add Printer Marks dialog box. For information about adding printer marks to just the printed output, see Include marks and bleeds.

Note:

A PDF created from Adobe InDesign CS and later can include printer marks, either in a separate layer or on the page. You can view these marks using the Layers tab in Acrobat. If the printer marks were exported as a layer, any printer marks you create using the Acrobat Add Printer Marks feature replace the InDesign printer marks. If the printer marks are not in a layer, Acrobat printer marks overlay InDesign printer marks and might not align.

Embed printer marks in a PDF

  1. Choose Tools > Print Production > Add Printer Marks.

  2. Specify the pages to mark.
  3. Specify the marks and settings.

Set Page Boxes dialog box overview

Use the Set Page Boxes dialog box (formerly called Crop Pages) to define boundaries for trim, bleed, and art when preparing your PDF for printing and other output. You can adjust the margins of document boxes supported by Adobe PDF, including the media (page size), trim, bleed, and art boxes. This capability is useful if the printer marks you add using the Add Printer Marks tool (not the Marks And Bleeds panel of the Advanced Print Setup dialog box) would be clipped because the crop box is too small to accommodate the marks. Print service providers can also use this tool to expand the page size for imposition tasks.

You can switch between boxes without losing the margins you set for each. As you adjust individual boxes, the preview in the Set Page Boxes dialog box is redrawn to reflect the new settings. For example, if you expand the crop or media box, the page content “shrinks” in the preview.

Note:

When the crop box is expanded, the media box adjusts accordingly.

Page Boxes dialog box
Set Page Boxes dialog box lets you set boundaries for trim, bleed, art, and page size

Open the Set Page Boxes dialog box

  1. Choose Tools > Print Production > Set Page Boxes.

Fix hairlines

Very thin lines, called hairlines, are problematic in offset printing. If left as is in PDFs, they might not appear in the final printed piece. The Fix Hairlines tool can find most hairlines and replace them with a heavier-weight line.

  1. Choose Tools > Print Production > Fix Hairlines.

  2. Enter a width for the hairline you want to find, and enter a replacement width.
    Fix Hairlines dialog box
    Adjust hairline widths using increment arrows. Shift-click arrows to change widths by whole integers.

  3. Select the unit of measurement from the Units menu.
  4. (Optional) Select Include Type3 Fonts or Include Patterns to replace hairlines in Type 3 characters or patterns with the same replacement width as other hairlines.

    Font characters and patterns can be used in a variety of contexts in the same document (for example, different magnification values), so changing the line width may produce unexpected results. Check the results if you select these options, and adjust your selections as necessary.

  5. Specify the pages to check.

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