Wrap a timeline around the edge

September 9, 2011 10:39 AM

How can I turn a 28 page pdf of a timeline, into a border for a single page document?

I have a pdf of a timeline, that ends up running to 28 pages in length. I want to use that timeline as the border of a single page summary article on the subject of the timeline, and discovered that if I print out the timeline at 12.5%, I can physically cut-and-paste them to position them into the border of an 8.5x11 page, but am wondering if there isn't some Publisher/Word/whatever trick that would let me do this stage in electronic form.

|T01|T02|T03|T04|T05|
|T28|xxxxxxxxxxx|T06|
|T27|xxxxxxxxxxx|T07|
....
|T20|xxxxxxxxxxx|T14|

posted by nomisxid to Media & Arts (2 answers total)

You can save pdfs, or selections from them, as images. Some versions of Acrobat will allow you to do this, as will some 3rd-party, but for your purposes, prob the easiest thing to do is screen captures (Alt + Print Screen), pasted into an image file.

Then, add up the images L-R in a freeware panorama program, and erase the crap you don't want. If the PDF borders interfere, you can batch-remove them using an image program like IrfanView.

Whew! OK, that sounds like a lot of work, but it's built of steps I do regularly in my work, so it seems easy to me.

Sorry, no one-step processes, although my recent question about stitching images together may be relevant - except I have a need to preserve original resolution, and you will want to downsize yours (which is the crux of my problem, really).
posted by IAmBroom at 11:03 AM on September 9, 2011

You can open the PDFs in Adobe Illustrator and re-size them to your border-making heart's content.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:34 PM on September 9, 2011