Resize Page to standard format A4 - keep orientation missing?

[guebert]

Hallo!

In former releases of PDFX there was an option, to resize all pages eg to A4 and keep the existing orientation. Now this "keep existing" is gone for this "standard formats", only. Or am I missing some information?

See screenshot attached from v 10.2.1 with 3 options for ortientation and 10.4.2 with only two left.

I need this eg for a PDF with pages bigger or smaller than A4 in different orientation (some landscape, some portrait). The result should be all A4 with the orientation as before.

Michael

10.2.1.jpg

10.4.2.jpg

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, guebert

Thank you for the report, it is indeed missing. The "by page" option does offer the "retain" orientation option, but the Standard no longer offers it. I will reach out to the Dev team and see if we can address this in a future release. In the meantime, if you resize one page to A4, then use the "by page" function, and specify that page, all others should be scaled to match that page size, and the retain option remains available. Terribly sorry for the confusion here.

Kind regards,

[guebert]

Dan,

thanks for having your dev team a look at this issue.

I use it most when converting pictures to PDF - the pictures are in mixed size and orientations and therefore I need "resize to A4" and "keep orientation" feature.

Michael

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, guebert

Indeed, I figured that was the case, This was where my 2 step process workaround came from. If you adjust one of those pages to the A4 size you need, as its own separate step, then you can select that already adjusted page, and make all the others match it's dimensions, while keeping their original orientation.

Kind regards,

[guebert]

It seems, there is still a problem with this feature ...

Please have a look at the screenshots attached and the pdf-file (public plans from a city in Austria, so not confidental)

Why is PDFX trying to change the orientation of the first page to portrait although I choose "keep orientation?

Michael

71.pdf

2025-03-19 09_40_56-Greenshot.jpg

2025-03-19 09_41_02-Greenshot.jpg

2025-03-19 09_41_05-Greenshot.jpg

2025-03-19 09_41_09-Greenshot.jpg

[rakunavi]

Hello guebert,

The first page looks like a landscape at first glance, but it is actually a portrait rotated 270 degrees. If you look at the page properties in the Thumbnails pane, you will see that the rotation angle is 270 degrees. You can use an external tool such as cpdf.exe to view the page information for a better understanding.

• Coherent PDF Command Line Tools
  https://community.coherentpdf.com/

Code: Select all

C:\Users\user\Downloads>"c:\Program Files\cpdf\cpdf.exe" -page-info 71.pdf
Page 1:
Label:
MediaBox: 0.000000 0.000000 595.275513 841.889832
CropBox: 0.000000 0.000000 595.275513 841.889832
BleedBox:
TrimBox:
ArtBox:
Rotation: 270
Annotations: 2
Page 2:
Label:
MediaBox: 0.000000 0.000000 841.889771 595.275574
CropBox: 0.000000 0.000000 841.889771 595.275574
BleedBox:
TrimBox:
ArtBox:
Rotation: 0
Annotations: 2
Page 3:
Label:
MediaBox: 0.000000 0.000000 841.889771 595.275574
CropBox: 0.000000 0.000000 841.889771 595.275574
BleedBox:
TrimBox:
ArtBox:
Rotation: 0
Annotations: 2

So if you normalize with the Normalize Pages command and then apply the Resize Pages command, you should get exactly what you intended.

Code: Select all

C:\Users\user\Downloads>"c:\Program Files\cpdf\cpdf.exe" -page-info 71_Normalize.pdf
Page 1:
Label:
MediaBox: 0.000000 0.000000 841.889832 595.275513
CropBox: 0.000000 0.000000 841.889832 595.275513
BleedBox:
TrimBox:
ArtBox:
Rotation: 0
Annotations: 2
Page 2:
Label:
MediaBox: 0.000000 0.000000 841.889771 595.275574
CropBox: 0.000000 0.000000 841.889771 595.275574
BleedBox:
TrimBox:
ArtBox:
Rotation: 0
Annotations: 2
Page 3:
Label:
MediaBox: 0.000000 0.000000 841.889771 595.275574
CropBox: 0.000000 0.000000 841.889771 595.275574
BleedBox:
TrimBox:
ArtBox:
Rotation: 0
Annotations: 2

• Animation.gif

Best regards,
rakunavi

[Willy Van Nuffel]

Thank you rakunavi for your always very clear explanations and gif animations.

So, in case of "Resize Pages", would it not be handy to have a Normalize option BEFORE the resize action is being applied ?

At this moment (build 395), there is only an option to Normalize AFTER resize pages.

Maybe there must be an option to choose : Normalize BEFORE or AFTER resize pages ? Any ideas ?

Kind regards.

Willy

[rakunavi]

Hello Willy, thank you for your comment.

As you say, if there is an option to apply Normalize even before the Resize Pages command is executed, there will naturally be more opportunities to consider normalization, which might have the effect of preventing questions such as this one. At the same time, however, it is easy to imagine that the development team would have difficulty in adding more options to the already large number of options.

Personally, I am in the habit of applying the Normalize Pages command unconsciously anytime, anywhere, so I don't mind if it is always applied forcefully. It might be more user-friendly to leave the current one checkbox in place and apply the Normalize Pages command both before and after Resize Pages command, without increasing the number of checkboxes. However, as I am less experienced than Willy, it is impossible for me to come up with a good idea, so please laugh it off.

Best regards,
rakunavi

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello,

I am unsure of the potential negative impacts of forcing a normalize before resizing, but I can see some clear benefits. By extension, your assesment that this dlg is already quite busy is undoubtedly correct. I have passed this topic along to the Dev team, with a summary of the issue, proposed solution, and some key points for consideration, as well as a link so they can review it all directly. We will see what they have to say on this.

For now, @guebert, The suggested workaround to normalize pages manually before using resize pages sounds like the best solution to this issue in the meantime.

Kind regards,

[guebert]

Thanks to everybody for your help!

And yes, I think, there should be some "enhancements" to get this feature more more intuitive and user friendly. I don't want to think about normalizing pages, but *keep* the orientation I see on the screen when resizing. So I crop and rotate pages and after that I resize them an the orientation should not change.

Michael

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, guebert

indeed, as always there is room for improvement. The proposed "normalize" action would in any case, change the page to claim that the rotated orientation is the actual page orientation, instead of it being a "portrait" page rotated 90 degrees, it would be a "landscape" page specifically. Beyond that, normalizing also fixes potential issues with the coordinate system, usually caused by page cropping, which can lead to some very specific issues in regards to use of the arrange and other numerically entered positioning values.

I still cannot think of scenarios where it is beneficial to leave these aspects of the page unchanged, but perhaps the Dev team will have some ideas in that area. For now, we will have to wait and see what they say in regards to this discussion, and what solutions they can offer later on.

RT#7404: FR: normalize before resize

Kind regards,