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PDF Export page size issue


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Having created a test booklet and then exported to PDF. When I tried to view or print this on double sided A4 paper something weird happened. The first page was portrait and full size A4. The successive pages where then landscape two per page as laid out in Affinity Publisher.

I would assume that all pages should be landscape (first page A5 on right hand side of a landscape page) or all pages A4 (double sided - page 1, 2/3 double sided. etc.). Is this right or am I missing something?

Please note that I am not a whizzy InDesign user but somebody who wants to do a bit of publishing and loved Serif Affinity products!

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You need an exact multiple of four pages for a booklet (e.g. an eight-page booklet will have page 8 on the left and page 1 on the right of a single spread, with pages 2 and 7 on the back of the same sheet). You’ll get odd results if the total number of pages isn’t divisible by four.

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Thanks, that is very useful. However, when you start a new document/project it comes set up with a front cover page and no back page is added. Surely this would be a useful thing to do as a default? Most people will probably want to work with an even number of pages?

I suppose the workaround is to delete the single default page and do a double but then the numbering will have to be manual to make it work out properly in print.

The strange thing is that if I print exactly the same document from Publisher directly, all the pages print in sequence perfectly. This makes me still think that the fault is with the PDF export because it is outputting a portrait first page and then landscape double pages which is decidedly odd.

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3 hours ago, Chris_K said:

Hi jimowers

Where are you printing this PDF from? is it from an external viewer or within an Affinity app? If it is an external app you are printing from it's going to be more the settings in the print dialog for that app than our PDF. 

Cheers

As I explained, inside Affinity Publisher Beta, I clicked Export/PDF - can’t be simpler.

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On 11/11/2018 at 12:21 PM, jimowers said:

However, when you start a new document/project it comes set up with a front cover page and no back page is added. Surely this would be a useful thing to do as a default?

Does your layout look something like this?  The first page you see is the front cover, pages 2 and 3 are the inside front cover and the inside back cover respectively, page 4 is the last page back cover when you close the book.

Capture.JPG.50e44caa5981555df4a1a526078a6a8d.JPG

Microsoft - Like entering your home and opening the stainless steel kitchen door, with a Popup: 'Do you really want to open this door'? Then looking for the dishwasher and finding it stored in the living room where you have to download a water supply from the app store, then you have to buy microsoft compliant soap, remove the carpet only to be told that it is glued to the floor.. Don't forget to make multiple copies of your front door key and post them to all who demand access to all the doors inside your home including the windows and outside shed.

Apple - Like entering your home and opening the oak framed Kitchen door and finding the dishwasher right in front you ready to be switched on, soap supplied, and water that comes through a water softener.  Ah the front door key is yours and it only needs to open the front door.

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When I created my new document page 1 was the only one present. I then added the page spears and, on someones advice to have an even set of pages I had to add in a single final page.

That is why I became puzzled as InDesign always did that for me as I remember,

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Still confused by what you are having a problem with - A 4 page booklet physically in your hand consists of two spreads including the outside back cover and outside title front cover.  This is what you physically hold in your hand.  Now to achieve this on the software you will actually see 2 Spreads with one single page at the beginning and one single page at the back.  This is still a 2 page spread booklet physically.  This works in this way because it is intuitive and friendlier than how one had to achieve this on the computer back in the 90's on pagemaker if I rightly remember (though I can not remember what programme I used back then at the office where I once worked) where page one and page 10 for example existed side by side as your spread.  I have no idea if any of this answers your question?

Microsoft - Like entering your home and opening the stainless steel kitchen door, with a Popup: 'Do you really want to open this door'? Then looking for the dishwasher and finding it stored in the living room where you have to download a water supply from the app store, then you have to buy microsoft compliant soap, remove the carpet only to be told that it is glued to the floor.. Don't forget to make multiple copies of your front door key and post them to all who demand access to all the doors inside your home including the windows and outside shed.

Apple - Like entering your home and opening the oak framed Kitchen door and finding the dishwasher right in front you ready to be switched on, soap supplied, and water that comes through a water softener.  Ah the front door key is yours and it only needs to open the front door.

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If you send what you describe to a third party as a PDF then what do they print?

Page 1 is an A4 single portrait page then the intermediate page pairs are A4 landscape pages (two side by side A5 pages) followed by a single final page which is, once again, a single A4 portrait page.

if, as an alternative, you print direct from Publisher then all pages will print correctly as A4 portrait and even double sided works correctly.

What I am saying is that the PDF is not correct. You cannot use PDF to send to a third party printer or to a client as it cannot be printed correctly.

I suggest that you actually try this for yourself as I am afraid that it cannot be described any further than that.

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If you are sending it to a professional printer they should most likely be doing the imposition rather than expecting it in the PDF file.  They would need to know that was what was intended.

If you are sending it to a non-pro who doesn't have the software tools to do this correctly, you can export a PDF from the Print dialog on the mac rather than using the export/pdf feature; set up the booklet in the Print dialog just like you would before sending it to your own printer, then use the "PDF" button-menu-thing in the lower-left corner of the print dialog.

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Sorry, but that is not a bug fix. It is a workaround.

as an end user, I want to produce a PDF in the normal way without hoops to jump through.publisher will not be the definitive software for publishing for a very long time. With Designer I work in just this way - export a PDF and send to a printer.

Pdf is an industry standard and if I can send a consistent file - the current one is not - then I will get consistent results.

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16 hours ago, jimowers said:

If you send what you describe to a third party as a PDF then what do they print?

Each printer requires different PDF setups, this set up in publisher is both the same way IDD and Publisher prepares work.  Now when I expport this to PDF I have an option to make the front cover and rear cover as a seperate file, this is how the well known Blurb industry get you to send to worldwide printers, two seperate files, one for the cover and one for the rest of the magazine or book.  Now there are also other setups options in PDF which can be hard to understand, these allow for different ways to prepare the spreads and see them after export.  You really have to sjow us exactly what settings you are using in PDF and how you have set up your publisher file.  I have exported spreads to pdf and printed from publisher with success.  So I am at a loss toknow where the problem begins in your workflow.

Microsoft - Like entering your home and opening the stainless steel kitchen door, with a Popup: 'Do you really want to open this door'? Then looking for the dishwasher and finding it stored in the living room where you have to download a water supply from the app store, then you have to buy microsoft compliant soap, remove the carpet only to be told that it is glued to the floor.. Don't forget to make multiple copies of your front door key and post them to all who demand access to all the doors inside your home including the windows and outside shed.

Apple - Like entering your home and opening the oak framed Kitchen door and finding the dishwasher right in front you ready to be switched on, soap supplied, and water that comes through a water softener.  Ah the front door key is yours and it only needs to open the front door.

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Chris, it was really not that difficult to solve the problem in Export to PDF without dazzling me with science.

 

All you needed to tell me was to change the Area dropdown to All Pages instead of All Spreads. The clue was in my description where I said that Publisher prints each page to A4 and that was what I was looking for. I knew that I had done this in the past in InDesign so I was sure that I could do it somehow in Publisher.

 

I think perhaps that All Pages would be a better default than All Spreads but maybe it was done this way to match InDesign. It is my suggestion that for the average numpty like me it may cause less confusion whilst black belt users, such as yourself, would know how to do this anyway.

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2 hours ago, jimowers said:

All you needed to tell me was to change the Area dropdown to All Pages instead of All Spreads.

Yep.you're right.  But I did not pick up on that, my fault.

2 hours ago, jimowers said:

it may cause less confusion whilst black belt users, such as yourself, would know how to do this anyway.

I am a sort of one up from a white belt with In design and publisher whatever colour that is !  Photography is my Black belt.

Microsoft - Like entering your home and opening the stainless steel kitchen door, with a Popup: 'Do you really want to open this door'? Then looking for the dishwasher and finding it stored in the living room where you have to download a water supply from the app store, then you have to buy microsoft compliant soap, remove the carpet only to be told that it is glued to the floor.. Don't forget to make multiple copies of your front door key and post them to all who demand access to all the doors inside your home including the windows and outside shed.

Apple - Like entering your home and opening the oak framed Kitchen door and finding the dishwasher right in front you ready to be switched on, soap supplied, and water that comes through a water softener.  Ah the front door key is yours and it only needs to open the front door.

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19 hours ago, jimowers said:

I think perhaps that All Pages would be a better default than All Spreads

I'll definitively second that. I find the default setting quite annoying and have to change that all the time. I wish that could stick once you have changed. Maybe the "All Spreads" option is useful in some case, I have not found it yet. Very easily, you can export All Spreads with bleed and printer marks, but that's really nothing you should send to a printer.

I would love to hear the argument for the current default.

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Many thanks vonBusing. The great thing about the Serif products is that they are opening up professional tools to a wider audience. I, for one, really value that as the alternative is prohibitively costly for a pensioner. Anything that they can do to help new users into the fold the better.

I consider this case closed from my point of view because I have a workaround and you have suggested a change.

Thanks to all who have helped.

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