Imposing pages in booklets

[gajrey1042]

Does Publisher support imposing pages to create printers pairs for booklets?

[Hernan Zenteno]

I am searching the same. Are there plugins or some way to solve that? Using mac OS Catalina. Trying to print and sew my own mock up book. 

[Old Bruce]

Hi and welcome to the forums @Hernan Zenteno 

On 10/1/2018 at 1:45 AM, gajrey1042 said:

Does Publisher support imposing pages to create printers pairs for booklets?

No.

Imposition is highly complex. If you know exactly what is required you can do it with Affinity Publisher. But it is a hell of a lot of work. Most printshops would most likely refuse the job if I supplied them with an imposed file, they would have to carefully deconstruct my file to make one of their own.

You need to know paper size and weight plus is it a 8 or 16 page signature and if it is a 12 or 24 page signature you need to know the folding pattern.

Printing at home you need to know the number of pages in a signature, you could make a physical mock-up of blank paper and number them once you have them folded together and then go to Publisher and make a PDF with pages and import them into a new document placing them according to your physical mock-up.

[thomaso]

On 10/1/2018 at 10:45 AM, gajrey1042 said:

Does Publisher support imposing pages to create printers pairs for booklets?

3 hours ago, Hernan Zenteno said:

I am searching the same.

The print dialog window offers a book + a booklet feature.
(as far I remember they distinguish in the page ranges selected for print. You might find it discussed in the forum.)

[gajrey]

It's sad that all the useful facilities like imposing booklet pages in Page Plus are missing from Affinity. OK it appears you can print out imposed pages, but for any serious printing you need imposed PDFs.

I have given up with Affinity and go on using Page Plus X9. And so do all my colleagues. It just does everything we need in the simplest way possible.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, gajrey said:

you need imposed PDFs.

To achieve an imposed PDF export from Affinity you could use as workaround its book/booklet feature + print to a virtual PDF printer which exists in both platforms Mac and Windows. On mac it get accessed via the print dialog > menu "PDF" in the bottom left corner. Unfortunately this way you have no options to PDF export settings (e.g. version, profiles).

[PaulEC]

Rather than trying to export imposed pages directly from APub, the easiest workaround is to export as PDF, then use the booklet printing option in a PDF viewer like Adobe Reader or Foxit.

[gajrey]

Thanks Paul,

We run a CD/DVD duplication and print business, mainly short run, so we need print ready pdfs. I did look at InDesign but unless you are using it every day it is far too complicated so Page Plus is perfect for us. Always has been, we have been using it since '97, and even if you use it occasionally there is usually an intuitive way to do what you need. Affinity hasn't retained that to do simple and complicated things simply.

I know I should stop complaining, but Serif could have updated Page Plus.

 

[Hernan Zenteno]

On 10/3/2020 at 2:54 PM, thomaso said:

The print dialog window offers a book + a booklet feature.
(as far I remember they distinguish in the page ranges selected for print. You might find it discussed in the forum.)

It is not working. There are no options about signatures, for example 8 or 16 pages. 

I made it before with In Design but I am out of Adobe except for the free version of Acrobat. Same problem. I include tried exporting individual 8 pages PDFs but can't get an ok display of pages for print a Booklet. 

As someone said I can design manually another file ready to print the mock up, but the book is 92 pages. 🤦‍♂️

[Fixx]

20 hours ago, gajrey said:

but for any serious printing you need imposed PDFs

For serious printing you use dedicated imposing software.

[gajrey]

In our industry CD plants for example expect imposed pdfs.

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, gajrey said:

In our industry CD plants for example expect imposed pdfs.

CD booklets are generally (in my experience) a single signature. For that, with Affinity Publisher, you can Print in Booklet format to a PDF printer-driver, and you will have an imposed PDF to give to your CD plant.

[thomaso]

8 hours ago, Hernan Zenteno said:

It is not working. There are no options about signatures, for example 8 or 16 pages. (...) but the book is 92 pages.

Do I understand correctly that you only want to print selected parts from your 92 page document but imposed as booklet, for instance pages 1–8 (8 pages on 2 sheets á 4 pages) or pages 5–20 (16 pages on 4 sheets á 4 pages) imposed as booklet?

If yes, you possibly run into this reported + logged bug, which imposes unexpectedly limited: If printed as "Book" it imposes always and only sets of 1 sheet per signature (4 pages each, regardless of the total number of pages to print) and if printed as "Booklet" always prints from/with the end/last page of the document, regardless of the selected page range. – Unfortunately still exists, also in the current APub Beta v742.

 

[Hernan Zenteno]

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

Do I understand correctly that you only want to print selected parts from your 92 page document but imposed as booklet, for instance pages 1–8 (8 pages on 2 sheets á 4 pages) or pages 5–20 (16 pages on 4 sheets á 4 pages) imposed as booklet?

If yes, you possibly run into this reported + logged bug, which imposes unexpectedly limited: If printed as "Book" it imposes always and only sets of 1 sheet per signature (4 pages each, regardless of the total number of pages to print) and if printed as "Booklet" always prints from/with the end/last page of the document, regardless of the selected page range. – Unfortunately still exists, also in the current APub Beta v742.

 

Many thanks. I really want to print the entire book, is a mock up I need to do. In some way the other post you mentioned is related. The inconvenient is that if I choose Book there are no way to divided it in several signatures to sew. And the display of images don't fit the order to make that. I will search another way. 

[Hernan Zenteno]

Hi people. Anyone knows a complement that can do signatures for Affinity Publisher or a stand alone app? Is for Mac and not for professional use. I saw some that are expensive and with a lot of functions I don't need, is just for print a mock up the size of A5 (A4 means four pages) with marks where fold it. Thanks 

[garrettm30]

29 minutes ago, Hernan Zenteno said:

Anyone knows a complement that can do signatures for Affinity Publisher or a stand alone app? Is for Mac and not for professional use.

For Mac, I use Create Booklet 2 ($20 US) as a companion app for creating imposed PDFs ready for print.

[Hernan Zenteno]

9 minutes ago, garrettm30 said:

For Mac, I use Create Booklet 2 ($20 US) as a companion app for creating imposed PDFs ready for print.

Thanks a lot. I will check it. 

[RIM]

On 10/5/2020 at 1:35 PM, walt.farrell said:

CD booklets are generally (in my experience) a single signature. For that, with Affinity Publisher, you can Print in Booklet format to a PDF printer-driver, and you will have an imposed PDF to give to your CD plant.

I see your point, but why is Affinity asking its customers to search / buy / run external software when the main logic is already built-in?

Most - if not all - CD-producers require CD-booklet designs as imposed PDF/X-1a - i.e. spreads with crop marks, bleeds, etc.
I'm quite surprised that Publisher CAN print exactly that layout, but does NOT allow for PDF generation in the same format.

Affinity Publisher could use similar options - and even dialogs - for PDF-export and for printing? Looks like efficient reuse of software to me.
That would be a great service to all customers that need to have CD-booklets printed.
 

Yes, I know the 'workaround' of using Print-to-PDF software but most of those do NOT fully comply with the PDF/X-1a standard.
And in my view software like Affinity Publisher should provide that PDF-option in stead of relying on non-Affinity software.

I have also read comments about issues when printing large booklets, but that doesn't play a role for CD-booklets with max. 24 pages.
Affinity could add a warning when using imposed PDF-export of booklets containing more than ... pages or grey-out the booklet option in that case.