Split Spread to place borderless or full-page photos.

[Peter Pan]

First of all, many thanks to Serif for Affinity Publisher. You did a great job and I love the software.

However, I miss two features that are enormously important and prevent me from saying goodbye to InDesign:

On the one hand, I do not have the "Data Merge" function that many users often want. I do not need to go into that.

On the other hand (and this is really annoying), the function "Split Spread" is missing in the "Pages" panel. But this is very important if you want to place borderless or full-page photos.

An example: Almost every professional printing company requires a 3mm bleed around each side. If I place a photo on the full page, the bleed of the photo on the opposite side appears during export. (see photo)

In InDesign this is solved so that you can split individual double pages and then placed on the split page the photo with bleed. (see photo)
That makes no problems in the export.

A smaller feature that is missing is that you cannot export the bleed mark but only the cut mark when exporting. But I think I can live with that for now. (I hope my printers too)

[Peter Pan]

Apparently, there is not much interest in this topic.
Is it because nobody works with full-page photos?
Or is there another way to place full-page photos that are exported without errors?
I'm grateful for every suggestion.

[walt.farrell]

You've made some suggestions. Unless someone has an idea for an alternative, a suggestion does not really require any respones from the users (such as me).

And Serif generally does not comment on feature requests/suggestions, in case you did not know that.

But if I were doing it, I would scale the photos so they are fully contained within the page, not bleeding outside of it.

But I'm curious about something: with spreads (2-page) I would only expect bleed around the outer edges, not across the gutter, as I would expect those 2 pages to be printed on a single sheet, which should not need bleeds at the gutter.

Is my understanding incorrect? (I don't have any experience, really, using bleeds, and most of my experience is with single pages, not facing pages.)

[NilsFinken]

I tend to agree with Walt. My professional printer (the biggest printer in my country) asks for individual pages in the PDF print file, not spreads. Thus it does not seem to be an issue. In-house may be different - I have not had the time to test that. Too busy layouting in Publisher! 

 

[Distill7]

Put the image inside a frame, or convert it into one if you placed it directly. Then scale the frame from the gutter to the outer bleed. I think this should solve your problem.

[Distill7]

33 minutes ago, toutou123 said:

Put the image inside a frame, or convert it into one if you placed it directly. Then scale the frame from the gutter to the outer bleed. I think this should solve your problem.

I placed an image inside a frame. It did not appear in the trim area of the exported page, but it leaks inside the bleed.

[Distill7]

This is actually quite problematic. I exported the pages without crop marks, and here is the result: the pdf file has a bleed on the 4 edges, it's white on the inside of the verso page, and it has the image on the inner side of the recto page.

[Hilltop]

 

4 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

But I'm curious about something: with spreads (2-page) I would only expect bleed around the outer edges, not across the gutter, as I would expect those 2 pages to be printed on a single sheet, which should not need bleeds at the gutter.

Is my understanding incorrect? (I don't have any experience, really, using bleeds, and most of my experience is with single pages, not facing pages.)

This issue is partly addressed in the video 'PDF publishing for pro print': https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/tutorials/publisher/desktop/video/337466797. Publications are presented to the printer as a set of individual pages, not spreads. During export  to a PDF file creating bleed for central gutter areas on both pages (of 2-page spreads) is automatically taken care of. However, this requires overlapping graphics and not images or vector objects that are placed exactly at the center gutter.

[Fixx]

It is true that when you set bleed to be in all sides there is unnecessary (at leat I think it is unnecessary) slice of image in the next page bleed. Normally this just does not happen and matter as you can set bleed to zero in the inner edge. With spiral bind this is a worse problem.

[Peter Pan]

21 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

You've made some suggestions. Unless someone has an idea for an alternative, a suggestion does not really require any respones from the users (such as me).

And Serif generally does not comment on feature requests/suggestions, in case you did not know that.

But if I were doing it, I would scale the photos so they are fully contained within the page, not bleeding outside of it.

But I'm curious about something: with spreads (2-page) I would only expect bleed around the outer edges, not across the gutter, as I would expect those 2 pages to be printed on a single sheet, which should not need bleeds at the gutter.

Is my understanding incorrect? (I don't have any experience, really, using bleeds, and most of my experience is with single pages, not facing pages.)

My printer expects single pages with all around bleed. But I would like to put the layout on double pages, because sometimes objects go over two pages (which works fine when exporting to single pages, by the way).
Even if I scale a photo accurately, a part of it appears in the bleed of the opposite page.

[ygoe]

I don't have this problem right now but I'm pretty sure I will when I do this kind of work.

So how can I export a document set to "facing pages" as separate pages into a PDF? I've just tried and the export contains spreads, not pages. I couldn't find any related option in the document settings or the export dialog. Can Publisher do this at all?

Also, is my understanding correct that I would set up a document with facing pages to have bleed only on the outer edges but not the inner edge? At least this feels right when editing and there's really no place for inner bleed when printing a magazine. The inside edge will continue on any other page of the magazine and anything that's meant to be cut away will appear somewhere. Only the center pages will be printed on the same sheet of paper.

[MikeW]

The only situation splitting a spread is needed is when comb/spiral/hole punched binding is used. Then it can be a necessity if the paper is pre-drilled. If the aforementioned holes are drilled after trimming, then it is a non-issue with imposition software. For all other binding types, the imposition software eliminates the opposite side bleed.

24 minutes ago, ygoe said:

...So how can I export a document set to "facing pages" as separate pages into a PDF? I've just tried and the export contains spreads, not pages. I couldn't find any related option in the document settings or the export dialog. Can Publisher do this at all?...

Export as All Pages instead of spreads.

[walt.farrell]

26 minutes ago, ygoe said:

So how can I export a document set to "facing pages" as separate pages into a PDF? I've just tried and the export contains spreads, not pages. I couldn't find any related option in the document settings or the export dialog. Can Publisher do this at all?

Use the All Pages option:

[Move Along People]

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[Old Bruce]

8 minutes ago, haakoo said:

But why do we need or use spreads if it isn't used in the printing business?

Couldn't we just use pages.

Is it because the other programs use it and this makes it more familiar for potential customers coming from these programs?

It is the way pages in a book or magazine or newspaper look. Nothing more, nothing less than that.

[ygoe]

Thanks for the hint on the export. This whole concept is new to me and I've only learned the word "spread" today, didn't know its translation yet.

So now this is basically one more of these options I have to change for an export each time. I hope I won't forget. I always forget some export setting the first time.

[walt.farrell]

7 hours ago, haakoo said:

But why do we need or use spreads if it isn't used in the printing business?

Publisher isn't just used in the printing business. It can be used by users printing to their printers directly, and if they're printing a booklet then they need to print multiple pages on each sheet of paper. For that purpose, spreads are appropriate.

 

6 hours ago, ygoe said:

So now this is basically one more of these options I have to change for an export each time.

Or, you could create your projects without using Facing Pages, and then you won't have to worry about remembering that Export option

 

[Fixx]

13 hours ago, ygoe said:

one more of these options I have to change for an export each time.

That is a same, and should be corrected by devs. 

[Peter Pan]

21 hours ago, haakoo said:

Well call me stupid,oh please don't,I know allready I am.

But why do we need or use spreads if it isn't used in the printing business?

Couldn't we just use pages.

Is it because the other programs use it and this makes it more familiar for potential customers coming from these programs?

Spreads are necessary because you can realize layouts on two sides. (see picture)
On single pages, such a thing would be difficult to realize.

[Helmar]

FWIW: I have published several publications where the bleed of one page "spills" over into the bleed of the other page. This is perfectly normal (otherwise it wouldn't exist), and no problem in the final print. At least it has never been a problem with the books / brochures I printed.

Cheers,

Helmar

[danzefirelli]

On 7/3/2019 at 6:52 PM, Peter Pan said:

Spreads are necessary because you can realize layouts on two sides. (see picture)
On single pages, such a thing would be difficult to realize.

How can I obtain this as automatic split when choose from double face pages to single page view? Is quite annoying to split each picture. Also there is the problem with adjusting bleeding each time a switch from double page to single page view.

[thomaso]

On 5/31/2020 at 11:11 AM, danzefirelli said:

each time a switch from double page to single page view.

Note that in APub the single/facing pages aren't simply a view or display option but a document property, with more affect than just a split view: It also influences e.g. the margin: Single pages don't know inner/outer but left/right margin only and so a switch can cause unexpected results, in particular when working with single master pages in a facing page document, which in APub appear to be treated initially as left pages.

So, there is no option yet to simply display spreads as single pages without possibly influencing the layout in an unexpected way. As a workaround, to display as single pages, you would need to export spreads as a single page PDF.

Also, different to this thread's start in 2019, with the current version of APub you can set in a facing page document the inner bleed to 0 and avoid this way an unwanted appearance of layout parts in the bleed of an opposite page.