Scale and layout multiple PDF pages on a Mac?

December 27, 2023 1:37 AM

I've got a PDF (see link after the jump) that should display cards for a board game, properly sized, multiple cards on a page. Instead, it's just showing each card as a single page in the PDF. I can tell Preview to print multiple pages on one page (up to 16) but this doesn't make the cards the correct size. Is there a way to lay out multiple pages on a single page (because I don't want one card per page), and scale each page/image to a chosen size?

This is the PDF on the publisher's DropBox. I want it to look like this other PDF on the same DropBox. Each card should be mini Euro size, so 44mm x 67mm. I don't care much about crop marks. Thanks!

posted by some little punk in a rocket to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Do you have Pages?

Make a new document in Pages by choosing a "Blank Layout" (not just "Blank") template from the Chooser. This will put the document in Page Layout mode rather than Word Processing mode, so you can place stuff on the page wherever you want.

Open the PDF in Preview. If you don't have visible page thumbnails down the left side of the window, do View > Thumbnails. Select one of the thumbnails and do Edit > Copy (Command-C).

Switch to Pages and hit Paste (Command-V).

Rinse and Repeat, moving your cards around the page however you want. In my experimentation the pasted cards are already at the dimensions you want, so you won't have to do much faffing about besides lining them up however you want so they're easy to cut.
posted by bcwinters at 5:54 AM on December 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

With Preview you should be able to use the “Pages per Sheet” setting to save a new PDF (use the “PDF” menu in the Print dialog instead of printing) that has that many cards per page. And then print that PDF with the Scale setting to get the exact size you want? Worth a try, anyway.
posted by staggernation at 6:12 AM on December 27, 2023

Some command-line options described here (Stack Exchange). Particularly, using ImageMagick with --montage may help with offering options to specify tile sizes or layering other transformations.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:05 AM on December 27, 2023

Here's the print dialog box from my try of Staggernation's suggestion.

Click PDF in the lower left corner and select Save As PDF and you'll create a new PDF which you can print multiple cards per page. You can choose the number of pages per sheet on the right hand side of the dialog box. You can play with the number per sheet to get close to the size you want.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:12 AM on December 27, 2023

I can set up a pdf page with what you want, but I think you should actually ask the publisher, if that's an option. The images on the single page pdf file are low-res file and won't look as sharp as the other version. It's about 100 dpi compared to 300 dpi on the other. The publisher should be able to adjust that and set up a printable single page pdf file for you.
posted by hydra77 at 7:27 AM on December 27, 2023