Is there a way to print a portion of a pdf page while maintaining scale?

[ApexMeditator]

I'm pretty new to building paper models and I've found myself having to print out replacement pages fairly regularly if a part is damaged or doesn't look right.

Is there a way to select just the portion of the page you want to print to save on ink?

[SCEtoAUX]

If you are using an Adobe Reader look for the Camera Icon surrounded by a dashed line in the menu bar at the top. Click on it to select that tool. You then left click and drag a box around the section of the page you want to print. It will leave a colored box around the selected area.

In the Pages to Print dialog the selection for Selected graphic should be ticked. Look below that to make sure Actual size is also chosen.


It should then just print the selected area.

[Don Boose]

This is very useful information. I'm sure glad you asked this question AM.

Don

[Don Boose]

My stupid question of the day, Doug.

I do not get a camera icon. This is what I get. Is it because of the security settings in the file? Or the wrong kind of Adobe Reader program? Or what?

Don

[VinceM]

Don, I have Adobe Acrobat Reader DC and I just looked it up. The camera was found in the "Edit" tool. I went to "print", then used the snapshot to frame a section of the PDF, and it printed like he said.
But it centered the snapshot in the page, so you'll save ink, but not paper. Is there a way to print several snapshots on one page?

[SCEtoAUX]

Don, I use Adobe Reader XI and that icon is on the tool bar. I can not recall if I cusomized the tool bar or if it has always been there.
Try this path to put the Take Snapshot tool on the toolbar:
View>Show/Hide>Toolbar Items>Edit>[choose] Take Snapshot

Vince, if the pdf is secured you probably can not copy the page or a selection on a page using the Take Snapshot tool. You could probably take a screen capture and edit the capture in a graphics program. Screen captures are usually low quality.

What I do when I can copy a selection and want multiple parts to print on one page is copy then paste the selection in a graphics program like PaintShop Pro or PhotoShop or what ever is your preferred program. You need to make sure the resolutions are the same or you will get an off-sized part. You can either paste the selecions individually then put them on one page or you can create a blank canvas in the graphics program and paste the parts on the canvas. Do any clean up that is needed then print.

Something else that is useful using the Take Snapshot tool is printing an A4 page on USLtr size paper. Sometimes you can select the entire page but keep the selection box real close to the parts to eliminate as much of the margins as you can. Then when you print the selected graphic and choose actual size it often will print the parts with no scaling. You have to keep an eye on the print preview to make sure there are no parts getting sliced. That will happen if the original page is layed out with the parts crowding the margins.

[Don Boose]

Thanks, VInce and Doug.

Doug - Your path to the snapshot tool worked like a charm. An excellent and most useful capability. Many thanks.

How do you copy and paste to a graphics program?

Don

[SCEtoAUX]

If the pdf is secured you have to remove the restrictions. (insert look of innocence here)
You enclose the graphic you want to copy with the selection box and you get a message "The selected area has been copied". That means it is copied to the clipboard and is being stored in memory. You then open your graphics program and generally right click and paste as a new image. That is how it works with PaintShop Pro. If you copy anything else before you paste the graphic it will be replaced in memory by what you copied afterward so it won't be available. Always remember to paste before you copy again.

It is then that you have to check out the size and resolution of the pasted graphic. You might have to change some parameters to insure the pasted graphic is the same size as the original in the pdf. I generally make sure I get the pasted graphic set at 300dpi in PSP9.

[jleslie48]

I gave up adobe about 10 years ago in favor of pdf-xchange ( https://www.tracker-software.com/pro...xchange-viewer ) and never looked back. Along with it starting up in 2 seconds and never leaving software in the background running, It has a host of features that make it superior to adobe. I've shown in the first two pictures how to print a section at 100%, but I rarely do that. Instead I use the "export to image" function which takes each page of the pdf and creates either a jpg or png of the exact dpi I want at whatever percent size I want. I then take the images of each of the pages and update/modify/print selectively as I please with paint shop pro. The third image shows that.

For secure files, if you just print the file to pdf using "cutePDF writer" it makes an unprotected pdf file out of the original so you can then use the "export to image" feature from the scrubbed pdf file.

[Sakrison]

Originally Posted by SCEtoAUX

If you are using an Adobe Reader look for the Camera Icon surrounded by a dashed line in the menu bar at the top. Click on it to select that tool. You then left click and drag a box around the section of the page you want to print. It will leave a colored box around the selected area.

In the Pages to Print dialog the selection for Selected graphic should be ticked. Look below that to make sure Actual size is also chosen.
Attachment 303489

It should then just print the selected area.

I never knew I could do that. That's very handy.