AD: Exporting artboards to single page PDF / bleed

[fiëé]

I’m using three artboards for a book cover. While it’s nice to get back, spine and front exported as pages in a PDF, I’d like to have the option to export all artboards together as one PDF page, similar to the pixel format exports.

Or did I overlook some option?

Additionally, the artboards don’t use the bleed options of the document but their own, and I couldn’t find how to change this.

With or without artboards I’d like to be able to switch visibility of the bleed area (similar to InDesign) – usually I want to see “everything” and page borders and bleed area just as rules, and then preview only the page contents.

[fiëé]

I found the hint to use a slice in the export persona and tried it, i.e. created a slice that spans all three artboards – but AD exports only the leftmost artboard, regardless of selection etc.

[walt.farrell]

Use the Export Persona.

Then, in the Slices panel, uncheck the 3 artboard slices (so they don't export) and check the background slice (so it does export). Set it to PDF, and you will have a 1-page PDF with all 3 artboards, arranged as they are in your workspace.

Sorry, I can't help you with bleed.

[fiëé]

Ah, finally got it – you need to use the export button in the slices panel, not the general export (menu entry).
And with selecting you meant the checkboxes, not the highlighting of active slices.

But the result is still not what I wanted/expected:

Some layers and their transparency settings get mixed up.
Is this a bug or to be expected?

 

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, fiëé said:

Some layers and their transparency settings get mixed up.
Is this a bug or to be expected?

With transparency, different kinds of PDF have different capabilities. So this will depend on the kind of PDF you choose to create in the presets list, where I think that generally the entries lower in the list have more capabilities for handling transparency:

It will also depend on the options you choose on the Export Options studio panel (which gives options like those you have in the More... part of the dialog you have with File > Export).

[fiëé]

No, that’s not the problem. Of course I tried different PDF options. At least PDF/X-4 is able to handle transparency.

Back and front cover have the same layers with mostly the same settings (the background group of the back layer has reduced opacity).
If I export single artboards, all is well, even in “simpler” PDF versions.

The background uses two images (a yellow structure and a mostly turquoise structure that is set to “hue”), both are bigger than the page.
It looks like one image from the back overlays spine and front up to the visible line, while probably the other image from the front overlays the back, i.e. the artboards interfere in exporting the combined slice.

EDIT: If I properly crop those images, it gets better. I didn’t previously because I couldn’t see the overlapping parts.

After cropping the background images, the export shows all the other elements that exceed the page. I hoped the artboards would take care of that.

Ok, cleaned up:

The artboards still add additional bleed. Need to experiment if I can find a way to avoid that...

Edited February 2, 2020 by fiëé

[walt.farrell]

19 minutes ago, fiëé said:

I hoped the artboards would take care of that. 

They would, but only if you export the artboards as individual PDF pages. If you want to get one page I think you'll need to clean things up yourself and trim those elements so they don't show up.

[fiëé]

Thanks for listening 

We can close the case now. My first book cover in AD is completed!

Now I’m just waiting for the blurb and text corrections.

[walt.farrell]

You're welcome, and congratulations!