Pages Grid in Imposition Wizard

Imposition Wizard imposes pages in two steps. At the first step it places a grid of a fixed size onto the sheet, then it fills the grid with pages, depending on the imposition layout. This way you can control the number of imposed pages and their position on the sheet.

Configuring the Grid Size

Let’s have a look at a simple 4–Up layout:

You see the grid is configured at the right panel. It has 2 rows and 2 columns. We can make it 6–Up by adding an extra row:

All the imposition layouts let you control the grid, except for the Booklet one. The booklet layout controls the grid itself for your convenience. For the rest of layouts you control the grid yourself.

Page Gaps

You can configure the distance between rows and columns of the grid by defining the page gaps at the right panel.

Read more about page gaps here

Positioning the Grid

You see the grid is centered on the sheet. You can change this at the Sheet tab at the right. There is a Content placement section there that controls the grid position:

The Content placement parameter lets you choose between the manual, centered and “minimal sheet” modes. The margins parameters below control how much to step out from the edges of the sheet.

When the centered mode is selected, the pages grid is placed in the middle of the sheet with the margins taken into account. Let’s try switching to the manual mode and see what happens:

The grid goes to the top left corner of the sheet. It is there for both even and odd sheets, as the duplex printing is inactive. We can now move the grid towards the center of sheet by editing the margins:

Here we set the left and top margins to 2cm and 1cm and the grid moved from the top left corner to that distance.

Margins and Modes

The margins work different depending on the content placement mode and the grid mode.

Manual Content Placement

In manual content mode if the grid is manually configured, only the left and top margins work and they offset the grid horizontally and vertically. Right and bottom margins don’t affect the grid, but you will get a preflight warning if the pages block goes onto them.

If the grid is automatic, Imposition Wizard will take all the margins into account, so no pages are placed too close to the edges.

Centered Content Placement

Regardless of the grid mode, the content is always centered with all the margins taken into account.

When the grid is automatic, Imposition Wizard marks sure that the number of rows and columns is just enough to not hit the margins.

When the grid is manual, you can configure the grid so it crossed the margins, but you will get a preflight warning about that.

Minimal Sheet Content Placement Mode

In this mode Imposition Wizard trims the sheet to match the pages grid block. If the margins are provided, the sheet is extended to that direction.

If the grid is automatic, it is configured against the full sheet size and then the sheet is trimmed to fit the grid.

Note that the trimmed sheet is still limited by the original sheet dimensions, so you cannot get it bigger than you selected above.

Rotating Grid

You can rotate the grid left, right or upside–down using the Content rotation option:

The whole grid is rotated this way. If there are multiple copies of the grid, they all are rotated as a single block.

The rotation is done around the center of the grid. All the crop and folding marks are rotated with the pages, but other marks, texts and color bars are not affected by the rotation, even if aligned to the content.

Multiple Copies of the Grid

You can place multiple copies of the grid on the sheet. It’s like doing step and repeat, but for the whole grid, not a single page. You can do this for all the imposition layout at the bottom of the layouts panel:

By default, no copies are made and both Rows and Columns parameters are set to 1. Say if you need 2 copies of the same grid, you can change the Rows parameter to 2:

Here you can see that the whole grid is copied down and you now get two copies of all the pages on the sheet.

You can also configure vertical and horizontal gaps between the copies, but unlike the page gaps option, the copies of the grid are regular: all the horizontal gaps are the same and all the vertical gaps are also the same.

Note About Duplex Printing

Let’s now switch to the duplex mode and see what happens:

When the duplex printing is enabled the content of the even (backside) sheets is moved to the right and the pages order is changed, so the even pages go right behind the odd ones.

In order to do that, Imposition Wizard needs to flip the left and right margins for the backside sheets when in duplex mode.

Read more about duplex printing here

More Imposition Wizard Tutorials

Installation

• Installation — how to install Imposition Wizard;
• License Activation — how to activate Imposition Wizard with a license key;
• Acrobat Plugin Problems — what to do if the plugin doesn’t work.

Basics

• User Interface — how to run Imposition Wizard and make the first steps;
• Pages Grid — how pages are placed across the sheets in Imposition Wizard;
• Presets — how to save and re–use imposition layouts.

Layouts

• N–Up — a very simple, yet customizable layout;
• Step and Repeat — perfect layout for business cards;
• Cut Stack — flexible layout with pages flow options;
• Booklet — lots of options for fine–tuning the imposition process;
• Shuffle — manual imposition mode where you control the flow;
• Dutch Cut — save paper by printing more pages on the same sheet.

Imposition Parameters

• Source Panel — overriding trim box and bleeds, pages scaling;
• Page Gaps — configuring gaps between pages;
• Sheet Panel — output sheet size, content position and more;
• Duplex Printing — duplex printing support;
• Registration Marks — adding and configuring marks, custom texts etc;
• Flipping Rules — how to flip pages in most layouts.

Registration Marks

• Angle Mark — angle mark for image drift compensation;
• Barcode — encoding job details with barcodes;
• Bull Eye — placing bull eye marks around the pages;
• Color Bar — adding color bars to imposed files;
• Crop Marks — configuring crop marks for easier trimming;
• Custom Mark — adding ad–hoc graphics where needed;
• Custom Text — adding text elements with imposition details;
• Gap Crop Marks — adding crop marks in the middle of the page gaps;
• Folding Marks — marking the middle of booklet spreads;
• Star Target — placing star target marks around the pages;
• Trim Line — marking page boundaries to simplify trimming;

Automation

• Batch Processing — impose multiple files at once;
• Hot Folders — monitor folders and run imposition on changes.

Command Line

• Basic Imposition — basic command line imposition example.