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Printing oversized documents
Some of the PDF documents that you want to print are too large to fit even
the largest paper sizes that your printer can handle. As you can see in Figures
8-1 and 8-4, Acrobat handles this in the Print dialog box by automatically
selecting the Shrink Large Pages on the Page Scaling drop-down list. This
option automatically scales down the text and graphics on each page to fit
the paper size selected for your printer.
When the Shrink Large Pages option is selected, the program automatically
selects the Auto-Rotate and Center Pages check box option. When this option
is selected, Acrobat routinely rotates PDF documents that are wider than the
selected paper size, while at the same time centering the text and graphics
that do fit. When this check box is selected in conjunction with the Shrink
Oversized Pages to Paper Size option, Acrobat shrinks the text and graphics
on each page so that they all fit and are centered on the page.
If you have a PostScript printer installed on your system, you can print over-
sized pages in your PDF documents using a method called tiling.When you
print oversized pages by tiling, Acrobat or Adobe Reader divides each over-
sized page into sections, each of which is printed on a single page of paper.
You can then fit the printed pages together to see how the oversized page
will appear when printed with a printer that can handle the oversized paper.
Acrobat gives you two print tiling options on the Page Scaling drop-down list:
Tile Large Pages (only pages larger than the selected paper size are tiled) and
Tile All Pages. Selecting either of these options displays the following new
settings in the Print dialog box (see Figure 8-5):
Tile Scale:Enter a value in this text box to scale the printed PDF file
onto tiles. A higher percentage creates more tiles, a lower percentage
creates fewer tiles.
Overlap: Enter a value in this text box to indicate the amount you want
the printing on adjacent tiles to overlap each other so you can more easily
align them with each other. Enter a decimal value for this overlap distance
of anywhere between 0.125 and 0.25 inches. You need this overlap dis-
tance, because laser printers have to maintain a minimum of blank space
on the page where they grab and pull the paper. The exact value you enter
depends on your particular printer and the page size your tiles use.
Cut Marks:Choose an option from this drop-down list to indicate which
guide marks you want printed on the page. Select None to have no
guides printed for cropping the tiled printout, or select either Western
(the crosshatched registration marks universally used in North
American and European printers) or Eastern style cut marks.
Labels:Select this check box to print descriptive labels on each tile.
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Part II:The Wealth of Ways for Creating PDF Files
