In this article, you will learn
- which prerequisites are required for this Fixup, and
- how to apply this Fixup.
1. Introduction
The Fixup Remove Layers and crop to visible area is available in the Workflow. The purpose of this Fixup is to flatten the currently visible content to one layer, delete all other layers and remove the white space around the Print Item.
2. General
The Fixup Remove Layers and crop to visible area can be used if you want to keep the currently visible content and remove all other objects that are not displayed in the Print Item. This allows you to drastically reduce the data size of the PDF and prevent any errors in the subsequent processing steps.
Find the Fixup in the footer of the sections Document Information and User-defined Fields in the Fixup group Manage Layers of an Article, Job or Production Job or in the tab Data Preparation.
3. Description
With this Fixup, currently invisible layers and their objects can be removed from the PDF-file, and the currently visible content can be consolidated into one layer. Consequently, undisplayed layers are deleted along with their content, the visible content is moved to one layer, and all other layers are removed.
3.1. Prerequisites and Functionality
For this Fixup to perform as intended, the following requirements must be met:
- The Print Item has several layers.
- Individual layers of the Print Item must be visible or invisible.
Figure 1: The dialog Remove Layers and crop to visible area
Access the following options in the dialog of the Fixup:
- Templates [1] – settings selected in the dialog can be saved as a template and applied to other Articles/Print Items, as well as used within Fixup Chains and in the Operations Apply Fixups and Check Print Item and Apply Fixups.
- Layer Name [2] – in the selection menu, select the layers that will be deleted together with all objects on them when the Fixup is executed.
- Safety Margin [3] – use this to determine the size of the safety margin. For Variable Content [5], select the desired placeholder – Database Field or User-defined Field – from which the value for the safety margin should be retrieved.
- Ignore Registration Marks [4] – when this box is checked, existing Registration Marks are ignored when cropping to the visible area and are therefore not displayed.
3.2. Before/After
To experiment with this function, refer to the sample file "Sample_Ebenen.pdf". The sample file contains three layers, two of which are visible and one is hidden. The Layers "Hintergrund" and "Sonnenblumen" should be deleted, and the remaining content cropped to the visible area. A safety margin of 3 mm should be retained.
After applying the Fixup, the file "Sample_Ebenen_End2.pdf" is created, in which the two layers have been deleted and the content cropped to the visible area. The values were taken from Figure 1.
Figure 2: Left: Original file with all layers visible; Right: Edited file in which two layers have been deleted and a safety margin of 3 mm has been added
Article update: Workflow 1.20.0 – 03/2025