Web Site Page Export

Question

I am creating a web site. I originally had it set up in layer comps for different pages. I need to be able to export a PDF of the entire site, but with each page being correctly cropped (not all the pages are the same length, obviously).

I have seen people create an InDesign document linking to the PSDs, but when exporting a PDF, that does not solve the individual page length of each page, and you get white space on the bottom of all the pages besides the longest page.

I am currently trying an option where I create individual PSDs for every single page of the web site, and then place all my PSDs in an Illustrator document, since it's very easy to adjust the length of each page or art board (and the length of each page probably won't change from here going forward when making any updates to the PSDs.)

Am I doing this right? Is there a better way?

Answer 1

One quick way of doing this but may not work* is using a full page screenshot program. There are plugins (At least for Chrome) that take a screenshot of the whole page (not including the browser parts). You can then save that as an image and then turn that image into a PDF if needed. Just search for an extension "Full Page Screenshot" and try one out.

*There might be an issue with the plugin that will not correctly stitch the multiple screenshots.

Answer 2

I think your method is alright. I personally don't approve making multiple documents into one single PSD file, especially if they don't even have the same dimension.

But if you prefer to have everything in one Photoshop file and export your layers as different PDF, and then use a custom dimension for each of them, you have some options.

Since you already seem to know how to export each layer into an individual file:

1 - You can export your layers in PDF or anything you want, and then crop them using Adobe Acrobat Pro. You will find the crop tool the menu "View", then "Tools", then select "Pages." You simply need to drag a rectangle to specific which area you don't want to be cropped; it should be easy and quick to remove the white areas from your PDF. If your PDF has many pages, each page can be cropped to a different dimension.

2- You can also re-import these individual PDF into an Indesign/Illustrator, and each make file will with its own length in "document Setup." Then you export these new files again in PDF at the right size.

3 - You can re-open these PDF into Photoshop and crop them with the "crop tool" to the right length.

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If you want all your different PDF to be in one PDF file again, simply use Acrobat Pro and re-insert all the single pages PDF together, and save this as a new file.

You can also optimize that PDF to keep a nice quality but be less heavy for online sharing:

Changing File Sizes in a PDF