how to do imposition of small pages

[JamesCanning]

Hi there, people. I would sure like some advice here. Even though this is rather off topic in an Affinity group.

I haven't been able to learn how to do impositions on my own, it seems to be too advanced a topic for me. I have access to both Devalipi Bookmaker and to Montax Imposer. I can't get started with either one because I'm too ignorant :-\ I'm stalled totally. What I want to do is impose pages on letter size paper, so as to make  both 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 and 5 1/2 x 8 1/2. booklets. The imposed pages will be cut as necessary from the letter sized printouts. This is all I will be doing. I'm unsure if I'm even wording this correctly. I find very little info online on how to do this, and it comes too thick and  fast for me to follow along. I need to add that I'm deaf so that multimedia is usually useless. Where it's captioned, it's difficult to watch the video and see and absorb the captioning at the same time.

Is this question answered in specialized printing classes?

I'll take this somewhere else if you say I should! Thanks for  reading it anyway.

James.desperate

[Dan C]

Hi James!

Unfortunately I'm not personally familiar with Imposition software, so I'm unable to provide direct help/recommendations, therefore I've included a few 'Understanding Imposition' links below - this may or may not help you here, hopefully other forums users with more experience will weigh in

https://www.xchangeus.com/2015/03/understanding-imposition-crash-course/

http://www.montax-imposer.com/about-imposition

[Petar Petrenko]

9 hours ago, JamesCanning said:

I would sure like some advice here.

I would recomend "Quite Imposing" to you:

http://www.quite.com/imposing/

it is an Adobe Acrobat plug-in and you can find tutorials on YouTube.

[JamesCanning]

Dan and Petar, thank you both very much. Sometimes even the way something is worded, can be helpful and informative, and I can use anything! I learned from these articles. I don't have Acrobat but I do have the two imposition softwares I mentioned, Montax and Bookmaker. These should have me ready to go and I need to find out many small details, such as your references discuss. I'm working on it on my own because of a personal interest that started with bookbinding. I didn't expect it to expand so much and so fast :-).

Again, thank you.

James

[Swandive]

Hello James,

First may I ask are you printing on 8.5 x 11" paper on your own printer?

I ask because I work for a print shop, most imposition software is designed to set up for bigger paper as it is much more efficient to set up as many as possible on a bigger sheet.

I currently use Imposition Wizard and Qpdf.  I am going to check as I have never set an imposition for letter size paper.

Standby,

 

Susan

[MikeW]

1 hour ago, Swandive said:

Hello James,

First may I ask are you printing on 8.5 x 11" paper on your own printer?

I ask because I work for a print shop, most imposition software is designed to set up for bigger paper as it is much more efficient to set up as many as possible on a bigger sheet.

I currently use Imposition Wizard and Qpdf.  I am going to check as I have never set an imposition for letter size paper.

Standby,

 

Susan

Welcome to the forum,  Susan. 

I thank you for stepping in, but I hope James has found out how to use one or both imposition softwares in the intervening months since posting. 

Both companies have good support. 

I use Montax myself but don't remember seeing this thread when it was posted else I would have also responded. 

[JamesCanning]

Gave up!

Peter and Susan,

I just now saw your replies to my old post. Thank you both very much. I am not following this topic any more because "other things have happened", that is I have lost interest after repeated failures, and am doing other things now.

I wanted to make small books from text I find or make up. These would be on standard office size paper, A4, maybe folded into halves or quarters. I  have learned bookbinding  as a way to make small books from start to finish. I was stopped by the problem of getting the pages to print out in the right order, which does not look to be possible with whats available online. That's where I am now.

Again, thank you!

James

[MikeW]

James, if I am understanding what you desire to do, it is possible with (at least) Montax. 

Should you wish to revisit this, I would be happy to create the imposition file for you to load into Montax. I would just need a pdf of your book/booklet and what you want to accomplish. 

Best regards, Mike 

[JamesCanning]

Mike,

Hi! I'm not so sure I even want to revisit this. I hoped to find a general sort of answer that would let me layout pages (5x7, even 4x5) on A4 paper and print correctly on the standard desktop printer everyone has lying around. Such as my Canon MX870. I thought there would just be some general rules or plans I could work with. I don't think that's possible now, I mean you could apparently make up a routine for printing a specific document in book form, but would the layout be usable with other text sizes, images and so on? I think this would get too complicated for my simple little mind. :-) If I'm wrong about that I'd love to hear more about it. Don't want much, do I ;-)

James

[MikeW]

James, I do imposed booklets and books in Montax frequently and print them out to my desktop printer for my own use and client mockups. 

You can feel free to upload to dropbox or the like and contact me privately with a download link at anytime now or anytime in the future. No worries or rush. As always, forum offers are at no cost. 

[JamesCanning]

Thank you very much, MikeW!

I have  to put together some stuff that's gotten kinda scattered, before we could try this. I'm surprised any body can do this 🙂 I gave up on it after a lot of effort. Too many things I didn't know, I was trying to learn it entirely on my own. One caveat is that I am profoundly deaf so that help videos are not much good. Would it be practical/possible for me to learn from an example of yours you might post or send me? My best example I worked hard on, is a 5x7 page size laid out on 8 1/2x11 paper booklet, listing all my passwords to everything. There's a lot of old stuff so it's fairly big.I don't feel free to send this out you understand!

James