Booklet option

[PMan]

Hi, before I added this I even checked I was on Affinity Publisher Beta for Desktop since there seems to be quite a lot about Macs.

1) on my Windows 10 setup wth Canon Pixma MG 3500, I have found that the best way to print booklets using 2 A5  facing pages  on A4(because my printer can only handle up to A4 paper) is simply change the option     Paper size Defined by Driver

 

 to Paper Size   A4  (the paper size I am printing on)

 

 

Since my printer can only print on A4 paper I can't publish a booklet of 2 A4 facing pages-that would require a printer capable of printing A3 paper, but I would assume IF your printer can handle A3 then setting paper size to A3 would print correctly, too.   On my printer  I have to set Double-sided to Flip short side - other printers may be different

For publishing A4 facing pages to PDFs (for me at least) I usually  simply  select  Microsoft Print to PDF as my printer and then set Paper Size  to A3 before clicking on OK.  This gives a much quicker and smaller output than exporting to PDF

Pman

[tiagonogueira]

On 10/24/2018 at 12:28 AM, pabloovl said:

Any progress on this? It would be nice to have the option to select signature sizes: 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32. So far I'm printing multi booklets. Exemple: If a have a book of 80 pages, I have to print 5 booklets, changing the page range: 1-16 / 17-32 / 33-48 / 49-64 / 65-80 (supposing I'm printing 16 pages signatures)

+1 here. The feature is great but the current 4 pages book are pretty much useless. Booklet works fine, no complains here.

[Sam Hones]

Booklet creation work around

Hi, if getting a pdf document in the right order, perhaps even from multiple sources (as long as the page dimensions are the same. See note lower down re Powerpoint, also applicaple to software that doesn't allow for bleed) use free programs like Adolix to add, split, merge (to keep it free you might have to do a merge a few times, i.e. add maximum pages and create one pdf, then do that to another group, then merge the two resulting PDFs again etc). Then, to get your pages in the right sequence, layout for your purpose you need to make what the trade calls an imposition. (to get it right get some A4 sheets of paper and fold them individually, then insert them inside each other. then number the pages (straight numbers: if you have A, B, C or Roman numeral pages, for this purpose they are 1st, 2nd etc pages)

Now go to an imposition software, free, online, sign up upload your pages and work through the sequence of steps and at the end, if you've done it right you'll get a pdf which is ready to print and finish (FST fold, stitch (staple) and trim round the edges).
I strongly recommend to have a dummy run with a multiple of 4, something like 8 or 12 pages first, before trying to impose a mamouth stitched maximum of 96 pages  (get the printshop to do that, they have efficient tools for the purpose)
If you have PagePlus X9 still (now legacy) you can import PDFs in the outline or image option, shunt the pages around to your requirements and re-export to an imposed PDF file

(word of caution with Powerpoint: you must go to custom page settings and enter the dimensions in manually, (i.e. Don't use the A4 setting as it's just insuring that the slide fits on an A4 sheet but is NOT A4.) so for A4 that would be in cms: 29.7 x 21 (last time I checked I didn't see a mm option but that was a while ago). and if you have print that goes to the edge you need to allow for bleed (overhanging image to be trimmed off) at 3mm on every outer edge and add that so the dimensions now are 30.3 x 21.6)

Hope this helps to solve someone's problems a little

[garrettm30]

Until today, I thought the booklet option that Publisher offers did everything I needed to, though I was a happy user of InDesign's print booklet interface previously. Today, however, I have come upon a limitation of Publisher when it comes to booklet imposition—or at least a limitation in my understanding of it.

One of our common formats is a booklet 18cm in height and 4.25in in width (sorry for the mix of units, but that's what it is). We print the booklets to US Letter paper and make a single cut at the bottom of the page. Here is an diagram example in case it helps make what I am describing more clear:

After the cut, the remaining booklet is stitched and folded down the middle vertically.

I set up the print settings to print as a booklet (in Affinity's Document Layout section of the print settings, not the print driver equivalent), and then in the Range and Scale section, I try to alter the orientation between portrait and landscape, but these are the results of the two options:

        

In changing the orientation, it automatically rotates the image, so that the printed result is exactly the same either way. In practical terms, this now means four cuts instead of one.

Is there something I am overlooking? If not, then please consider this post as feedback concerning the limitation of the current implementation.

If it is a limitation, does anyone have suggestions for working around it? I have tried to add a lot of bleed at the bottom, but that didn't seem to make a difference. Of course I could just design the layout with all that extra whitespace, but that is not desirable since we also export the PDF for screen. I am including a simple mockup file with similar dimensions in case anyone wishes to try.

booklet_test.afpub

[Old Bruce]

Have you tried setting a bleed at the bottom but not the sides or top? ~ 4 inches.

[MikeW]

Just a note...if the booklet size was 0.087 inches shorter, you could do 2-up to a US Legal size sheet.

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

Have you tried setting a bleed at the bottom but not the sides or top? ~ 4 inches.

Seems that adding the bleed is split, half on and half off the print sheet because the design is centered in the print preview.

[Argee]

All sorted now, thanks for the help. Ray

 

[Sam Hones]

1 hour ago, garrettm30 said:

Until today, I thought the booklet option that Publisher offers did everything I needed to, though I was a happy user of InDesign's print booklet interface previously. Today, however, I have come upon a limitation of Publisher when it comes to booklet imposition—or at least a limitation in my understanding of it.

One of our common formats is a booklet 18cm in height and 4.25in in width (sorry for the mix of units, but that's what it is). We print the booklets to US Letter paper and make a single cut at the bottom of the page. Here is an diagram example in case it helps make what I am describing more clear:

After the cut, the remaining booklet is stitched and folded down the middle vertically.

I set up the print settings to print as a booklet (in Affinity's Document Layout section of the print settings, not the print driver equivalent), and then in the Range and Scale section, I try to alter the orientation between portrait and landscape, but these are the results of the two options:

        

In changing the orientation, it automatically rotates the image, so that the printed result is exactly the same either way. In practical terms, this now means four cuts instead of one.

Is there something I am overlooking? If not, then please consider this post as feedback concerning the limitation of the current implementation.

If it is a limitation, does anyone have suggestions for working around it? I have tried to add a lot of bleed at the bottom, but that didn't seem to make a difference. Of course I could just design the layout with all that extra whitespace, but that is not desirable since we also export the PDF for screen. I am including a simple mockup file with similar dimensions in case anyone wishes to try.

booklet_test.afpub

I suggest you make your life easy by producing individual PDF pages with bleed, then impose with an online imposition software or get Quite Imposing. The resulting page area when you come to print, you can then position it on the sheet where you want, to facilitate offcut and should you wish to utilise the offcut by printing on it at the same time, then I would add that in Acrobat Pro or even try Libre Office. It appears an unnecessary step to go via PDF but especially then when somebody else handles it, it is safer. If you use a printshop it's always best to give individual PDF pages (rather than spreads) with bleed and in CMYK. giving them spreads might cause them to have to do extra work. Make 2 PDF versions: 1 with bleed for a printshop, the other without bleed for viewing and if it's for web or proofing then you are ok to only use 100 or 150 dpi rather than the 300dpi for printing. BTW 300dpi for an image means at the size you are printing it, as if you enlarge a 300 dpi image then the dpi drops inverse square.

[garrettm30]

Thank you for all your comments. I take it that I have not overlooked a Publisher option that might have helped, unless someone else has some ingenious solution we haven't thought of yet. I will offer some suggestions to Serif in a following post after I first respond to you kind people who offered your thoughts.

On 1/17/2020 at 5:56 PM, Old Bruce said:

Have you tried setting a bleed at the bottom but not the sides or top? ~ 4 inches.

Thank you for the suggestion. I did indeed try that, and it is as MikeW has said. The document gets centered on the page irrespective of bleed, such that most of the bleed would not even be on the printed page. There may be some solution by exporting the PDF with bleed, as it does support that; I would have to experiment with what I could do with the resulting PDF.

On 1/17/2020 at 7:04 PM, MikeW said:

Just a note...if the booklet size was 0.087 inches shorter, you could do 2-up to a US Legal size sheet.

Not a bad idea. On the balance I think it is less ideal for our situation, because we have just a few uniform widths for optimal packaging purposes, and I keep my stock of papers of the various colors in 11x17. The whole story in this case is that I actually print two copies on the 11x17, but I was trying to simplify my scenario for this discussion. Also I would have a lot of reformatting to do on the publications of this type.

On 1/17/2020 at 7:24 PM, Sam Hones said:

If you use a printshop it's always best to give individual PDF pages (rather than spreads)

Thanks for your comments. Your advice is good in many situations. In our case, we are a small non-profit publisher where each of us has to wear several hats. I do the layouts, but I am also the one who will be standing in front of the cutter working with the printed results.

For the present, I think the idea of separate imposition software is probably my best option. I would be looking for something on Mac, not requiring Adobe (I could just keep using InDesign, but here I am working on an alternate workflow), and likely something paid but not priced in the hundreds. Create Booklet 2 might be such a solution, but I haven't really looked into it closely.

[garrettm30]

Here are some suggestions to Serif relating to my scenario that might have more general benefit:

1. One option would be a dedicated imposition solution, or some other answer to InDesign's "Print Booklet" feature. That would take much time to implement, and I am not sure I personally would necessarily need it if the more simple items in suggestion 3 below were implemented.
2. An in-between solution would be to allow exporting a PDF with spreads already arranged for booklets/books. That could just be a PDF export setting, not requiring much in the way of additional UI, and it might even be easy to reuse the existing code from the current booklet printing feature. With forward thinking, it could serve as some building blocks to a fuller version of suggestion #1 above.
3. Thinking outside of booklet needs, a quick win would be some additional print layout options, which could have broader appeal for users with unrelated scenarios. First, consider the orientation options in Apple's Preview app:
   
   
   The current implementation in Publisher is essentially the same as above with "Auto Rotate" turned on. Giving us an option to turn it off would mean we could change the image orientation relative to the page. Currently we have no way to do that, but rather selecting portrait or landscape yields exactly the same result in print (and so it is relevant only in print to PDF)
   
   And the second refinement would be to allow us to change the position on the printed page. Equivalent to the Page Position options in InDesign (where currently Publisher offers the "Centered" option as the default and only possibility):
   
   

[fde101]

1 hour ago, garrettm30 said:

I think the idea of separate imposition software is probably my best option. I would be looking for something on Mac, not requiring Adobe (I could just keep using InDesign, but here I am working on an alternate workflow), and likely something paid but not priced in the hundreds.

FitPlot ($15 on the app store) can do this, but the interface takes some getting used to.

[garrettm30]

Thanks @fde101. That looks perhaps confusing but also potentially powerful, perhaps for more things than just booklets. I wonder if anyone has any comparisons between solutions such as this and others like Create Booklet 2.

[fde101]

16 minutes ago, garrettm30 said:

Create Booklet 2

Based on a YouTube video I found demonstrating Create Booklet 2, it looks like each of the programs has capabilities the other does not.  I haven't tried Create Booklet 2 (yet?) so can't really comment on it beyond that at this point.  FitPlot has a free demo on the company's web site, but I don't see one for Create Booklet 2.

[Football Fan]

I print our 24 page football programme every week no problems. It is no different to using the old Serif Page Plus. Decide on the number of pages (in multiples of four) 24 page (A5). When going to print use  A4 double sided, flip short edge. Once printed fold in half and staple job done. Also save as PDF and do the same.  

[Kaje]

On 8/30/2018 at 1:59 PM, Thisismandatory said:

For me on Mac it doesn't seem to work properly. And in honesty, I rarely print straight from my computer it would be good to be able to export it. On Mac I can make a pdf, on win on the other hand idk. 

On the image you can see that the spread just doesn't fit properly on the page

I have the same issue of the document layout being too big or lined up incorrectly when printing a booklet

[davidkuri]

If printing as booklet is supported, I would expect it to be supported in the export dialogue for PDFs as well, but as of Publisher 2.3.0 I can't seem to find the option.

[walt.farrell]

12 minutes ago, davidkuri said:

If printing as booklet is supported, I would expect it to be supported in the export dialogue for PDFs as well, but as of Publisher 2.3.0 I can't seem to find the option.

It is only a Print option, not an Export option.

[davidkuri]

55 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

It is only a Print option, not an Export option.

Thanks for confirming. So if I want to deliver a print-ready PDF with bleed and correct spread/page order to a professional printer, what do I do? Create the file in imposed page order from the get-go (i.e. if it's an 8-page booklet, make the first spread pages 8/1, the second spread pages 2/7 etc.)?

[walt.farrell]

2 minutes ago, davidkuri said:

Thanks for confirming. So if I want to deliver a print-ready PDF with bleed and correct spread/page order to a professional printer, what do I do? Create the file in shuffled page order from the get-go (i.e. if it's an 8-page booklet, make the first spread pages 8/1, the second spread pages 2/7 etc.)?

Ideally (in my opinion) you will Export to a PDF specifying All Pages, and let it export in the proper reading order (page 1 through page n). Your professional printer should have imposition software, and if they need the pages in some other order they can get the order they need.

Even if you could Export using a Booklet mode, it would give you a single signature, which is probably not what you need. You would need to Export pages 1-16, then 17-32, 33-48, etc. and then deliver "n" PDF files to your printer or find a way to concatenate them into a single file.

[davidkuri]

16 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Ideally (in my opinion) you will Export to a PDF specifying All Pages, and let it export in the proper reading order (page 1 through page n). Your professional printer should have imposition software, and if they need the pages in some other order they can get the order they need.

Even if you could Export using a Booklet mode, it would give you a single signature, which is probably not what you need. You would need to Export pages 1-16, then 17-32, 33-48, etc. and then deliver "n" PDF files to your printer or find a way to concatenate them into a single file.

Thanks again! This is for a CD booklet where usually a single file with imposed pages is expected. I also stumbled up your replies and the replies of others in this thread and it seems the only options are to either use external tools (including a print-to-PDF option) or create the imposed file manually. I hope that there will be better support for this in a future Publisher version.