Combine jpegs to create PDF with blank page background

Question

Hello, I have hundreds of newspaper scans of various sizes, same dpi, and I want to combine them to create one PDF with each of them on a blank 8.5 x 11 background page? like in a scrapbook. Is this possible using only acrobat? Or does it need to be done on a program like indesign? Appreciate any thoughts.

Answer 1

Here's a script that you can use to create the blank document with a button on each page. When a page is clicked, it will prompt you to import an image (it defaults to PDF, so select JPG from the from the dropdown) to use for the icon. You can set the "num_pages" variable from 100 to whatever amount you need. To run the script, open the JavaScript console (Ctrl+J), copy the entire script below, paste it into the console, select all of the lines, and press Ctrl+Enter. This will run the script and the result will be a 100 page PDF:
// Start of script
// Create a new document and make the page a template
var newDoc = app.newDoc({nHeight: 11 * 72, nWidth: 8.5 * 72});
var t1 = newDoc.createTemplate("t1", 0);
// Add a button to the template and set the various properties
var f = newDoc.addField("icon", "button", 0, [0, 11 * 72, 8.5 * 72, 0]);
f.buttonPosition = position.iconOnly;
f.borderStyle = border.s;  // Solid
f.buttonAlignX = 50;
f.buttonAlignY = 50;
f.buttonFitBounds = true;
f.buttonScaleHow = scaleHow.proportional;
f.buttonScaleWhen = scaleWhen.tooBig;
f.lineWidth = 0;
f.fillColor = color.transparent;
f.strokeColor = color.transparent;
f.setAction("MouseUp", "event.target.buttonImportIcon();");
// Create multiple pages based on the template
var num_pages = 100;
for (var i = 0; i < num_pages; i += 1) {
    t1.spawn(i, true, false);
// Remove the template page
newDoc.deletePages(newDoc.numPages - 1);
// End of script
Save the file that is generated. After you populate all the buttons by clicking on each page, you can flatten the pages by entering the following line in the console and executing it as you did with the previous script:
// Convert button appearances to regular page contents.
flattenPages();
Save to a different file and you should have what you want. Post again if anything isn't working.
Note that it would be possible to automatically import the images, but you'd need to create a list of the files you want to import and amend the script a bit. If interested, I could show an example of how you'd do this.