Publisher V2 - How to Impose Pages in PDF Export?

[Ali]

I have just upgraded to V2 and had hoped that this oversight in V1 would have been fixed, but alas it seems it hasn't, unless I am missing a setting somewhere.

In PagePlus (which I am still using because of this shortcoming in Affinity Publisher) I could tick a box to export my document to printer's pairs (i.e. imposed) tin PDF. This option was missing in V1 - can someone please either tell me where to find it in V2 or confirm that it's still missing?

Thank you.

[walt.farrell]

I'm not sure what you mean by "printer's pairs" in this context. 

But are you perhaps simply needing to use the Area: All Pages setting in the Export dialog, rather than Area: All Spreads? That's been available since the first release of Publisher.

[Ali]

Thanks, @walt.farrell for the reply. I thought my post had got lost in the sea of wailing, whinging and whining about what is an incredible V2 launch offer - some people don't know they are born!

No, that is not what I wanted.

I don't know if you ever used PagePlus, but back then there was a tick box in PDF export that allowed you to export with the pages imposed (i.e. in printer's pairs). This would create a PDF export with a four-page booklet laid out with pages 4 and 1 togather, and pages 2 and 3 together. These are printer's pairs. This was not possible in Publisher V1 and does not seem to have been added to V2, more's the pity. So I'll have to stick with PagePlus a while longer for my multi-page documents, as I prefer to be able to export them in that way.

Thanks again.

[joe_l]

6 minutes ago, Ali said:

So I'll have to stick with PagePlus a while longer for my multi-page documents, as I prefer to be able to export them in that way.

For what special reason? Professional print studio should (must) be able to impose PDF documents. If you print it to your personal printer, you can use the Booklet model in the printing dialogue ... or print to a PDF printer driver. The last option has to be carefully evaluated, since the quality of the PDF printer driver can vary depending on the maker of the printer driver resp. how this printer driver was programmed.

[Ali]

15 minutes ago, joe_l said:

For what special reason? Professional print studio should (must) be able to impose PDF documents. If you print it to your personal printer, you can use the Booklet model in the printing dialogue ... or print to a PDF printer driver. The last option has to be carefully evaluated, since the quality of the PDF printer driver can vary depending on the maker of the printer driver resp. how this printer driver was programmed.

Because that's the way I want to do it. This is not a discussion about how else I might go about it: I am not looking for workarounds, but thanks for your comment.

[CASMARA]

I feel your pain and frustration Ali.

I am also looking for a simple 'printers pair' option on PDF export, to send to a professional printer.
Yes they can rearrange the current output from Affinity Publisher 2 but charge for the time in doing so.

A 16 page booklet should be presented thus:-

16-1

2-15

14-3

4-13

12-5

6-11

10-7

8-9

[loukash]

5 hours ago, CASMARA said:

'printers pair' option on PDF export, to send to a professional printer

Hm… in my almost 30 years of doing DTP, I've never met a professional printer who would want me to send them imposed PDF. Each one I've ever worked with wants to do it themselves.

[loukash]

On Mac, you can use the Print dialog to impose, then save as PDF.
However, the Save As PDF options in MacOS are rather limited.

[Greg E]

I can confirm that this can be accomplished in Publisher V2 (I am on Windows 11). Here are the steps (I am new to forum contribution, I hope my illustration works here...)

1. Go to the print dialog (I use <CTRL><P> for this)
2. For the printer, select "print to pdf" (red box in illustration). If there is not a pre-installed function on your computer, you can download one. I used "Microsoft Print To PDF", which came with my computer.
3. Select the "layout" button at the bottom (green). Then select "booklet" for the model (blue).
4. You will want to set the paper size, likely double your page size. I am in US, and printing a letter size (8.5" x 11") document on tabloid size (11" x 17") paper.
5. When you click "ok", it will take you to a file save dialog.

That said, I have now changed to a workflow where the document is exported to PDF as individual pages. My printer prefers to do its own imposition, and exporting as pages keeps my printed v online versions identical.

I hope this helps!

-Greg

[rah1861]

I agree that you can do it this way, but you are relying on using a PDF driver to create your PDF. The complaint here is that Affinity Publisher cannot do it using its own Export to PDF. For users like myself and @Ali , who are coming from PagePlus (which did it wonderfully without any need for a driver), this is a big shortcoming of AP. Surely they know this, but are ignoring people's complaints.

[Hilltop]

38 minutes ago, rah1861 said:

Surely they know this, but are ignoring people's complaints.

Or they're busy developing/improving the many other tools and features that are in demand?

[Ali]

@Greg EThanks, but I wasn't looking for a workaround (I know the workarounds). I'd still like to see it in the Export dialog as it used to be in PagePlus.

@Hilltop@rah1861 We cannot possibly know whether they have any intention of ever including this, and I prefer not to make assumptions either way.

[cai]

On 11/30/2022 at 4:16 PM, loukash said:

Hm… in my almost 30 years of doing DTP, I've never met a professional printer who would want me to send them imposed PDF. Each one I've ever worked with wants to do it themselves.

Well I just sent a rush job to my local neighbourhood printers and they replied asking for printer's spreads instead of readers spreads, so I came to this thread looking for how to do it.  Luckily the print-to-PDF option allows printer's marks to be added after imposition, otherwise I'd be up the creek, though I had to create a custom paper size to account for these marks without them being cut off. For those curious, it appeared to save the PDF at full quality — in fact because it doesn't allow the adding of JPEG compression, the resultant PDF was gigantic compared to one exported directly from Publisher.

It is frankly a little bizarre that professional software that deals in spread-based documents won't do printer's spreads — doesn't seem like it would be hard to do, given it can happily split spreads into pages already...

[cai]

On 4/20/2023 at 12:49 PM, cai said:

Well I just sent a rush job to my local neighbourhood printers and they replied asking for printer's spreads instead of readers spreads, so I came to this thread looking for how to do it.  Luckily the print-to-PDF option allows printer's marks to be added after imposition, otherwise I'd be up the creek, though I had to create a custom paper size to account for these marks without them being cut off. For those curious, it appeared to save the PDF at full quality — in fact because it doesn't allow the adding of JPEG compression, the resultant PDF was gigantic compared to one exported directly from Publisher.

It is frankly a little bizarre that professional software that deals in spread-based documents won't do printer's spreads — doesn't seem like it would be hard to do, given it can happily split spreads into pages already...

A word of warning for those who use the print-to-pdf-booklet method: if your document has bleed and also a transparent background, this ersatz imposition method will shove the bleed of one page under the transparency of the abutting page, which is obviously incorrect. Make sure your have no transparency within a bleed's width of your page edges if you're using this method.

And yes, I did only discover this after I got back the finished — and now recycled — print job.  My error, to be sure, but enabled by my having to do this in a hurry using an unsupported method.

[Bill Deevy]

We are a professional printing business who prefer to get single page PDF's from our customers so we can impose it ourselves. I can understand why the developer hasn't included imposition as a possibility as the amount of variables would be enormous. An imposition will change depending on various criteria, the size of the press, the method of binding, the number of pages, availability of papers with particular grain directions and so on. 

The reason I tripped across this thread is we are considering moving away from Adobe due to cost and incompatabilities across platforms. The imposition plug-in we use for is even more expensive than Adobe CS and we were hoping Affinity had developed their own. It seems they have not, which is rather short sighted in our opinion as if they had done so, they would get an almost immediate "buy in" from printing and signage businesses, thus making it an easier decision for all others in the graphic arts community to follow.

We would be very interested to hear from other print pros who are using Affinity and what imposition solutions they're using?

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, Bill Deevy said:

It seems they have not, which is rather short sighted in our opinion as if they had done so, they would get an almost immediate "buy in" from printing and signage businesses, thus making it an easier decision for all others in the graphic arts community to follow.

But considering what you said about the number of variables to consider, do you think it would be worth the cost to Serif to try to develop this vs. the revenue purchases they would get from these (& other?) businesses, at least not without having to raise the purchase price significantly which could result in fewer sales across all market segments?

[MickRose]

17 hours ago, Bill Deevy said:

We would be very interested to hear from other print pros who are using Affinity and what imposition solutions they're using?

I've been using PLDA for many years for digital impositions. Most of it is very simple to use though it can also do quite complex stuff. There is a 14 day free trial.

[ChrisRC]

I have a color copier at work that can do A3 size (~11x17).  I would like to take a 16-page A5 document in Affinity Publisher v2 and imposition print the pages to a PDF or direct to the copier. I can then take the printed A3 output and fold it in half to A4, fold it in half again in the other direction to A3, cut two edges and DONE, I then have a 16-page FINISHED booklet that just needs a saddle-stitch to hold it together.  I have a cheap saddle stitch stapler for $15.

To make a 32-page booklet I would do two 16-page "signatures" and stitch them all together in a binding solution at home, or professionally book bound.

If this feature was added and promoted for Affinity Publisher, I think it would be a creative boon to a lot of people who are unaware of the benefits of imposition saving them a lot of time.

The video below explains why this is so much easier for creative types at home to create complete booklets fast and in small quantities or used in production shops to create half-sized mock-ups before sending to a printer to be printed on a printing press at full size.  If the final print size with the professional printing company will produce an A4 booklet size which requires an A2 paper size on the press, it could be prototyped as a booklet in half size using A3 laser printer/copier to produce an a5 booklet sizes. 

Also knowing how this works and how the professional printer has to think when they print the job, might save the end user money when ordering print production jobs. The designer starts thinking about production and costs. (I am a former print design and production professional. Did it for 12 years ago)