Booklet Imposition Layout

Booklet layout is used to arrange pages for printing booklets and books. The layout is designed for saddle–stitched jobs. Both Standalone and Acrobat versions of Imposition Wizard support booklets. It can be selected in the Layout drop–down list at the Layout tab of the right panel, choose “Booklet”:

Basic Booklet Properties

General booklet settings are:

• Pages — controls the booklet type, can be one of: “2–up”, “4–up”, “8–up” or “16–up”, i.e. you can have 2, 4, 8 or 16 output pages per plate;
• Mode — defines the booklet layout, can be one of: “Sheetwise”, “Work & Turn” or “Work & Tumble”;
• Right to left — useful for right–to–left languages like Arabic.

Printing Sequences and Perfect Binding

By default the whole source document is imposed as a single printing signature. For bigger documents you might need to print booklet as a series of signatures, stitch each of them separately and then hard–cover them altogether. This is called “Perfect binding” and can be enabled using Signatures option:

You need to define output signature size in sheets, i.e. how many printed sheets will be bent, cut and stitched together. Then comes Add extra pages option that extends the last signature with empty pages, so it matches the size of the others.

Perfect bound booklets also have Collating Marks option:

Collating marks make it easier to stack printed and stitched signatures before gluing them up with the cover. For properly aligned book, these marks make up a diagonal line letting you visually control the signatures order.

You can define size and color of the marks using the corresponding options.

Manual Folding

By default all the sheets in the output signature are intended to be bent and cut together. While it’s handy for smaller signatures, the more sheets are placed per stitch the more challenging the bending is. The Manual folding option helps defining how many output sheets are bent at once:

Bent and cut sheets must be put one inside another in the order they were printed in order to assemble a valid booklet signature.

Creep

Creep is a must–have option for thick signatures, it defines pages shift to/from the stitch in order to compensate the paper thickness:

You can configure if you want to shift the inner edges of the pages, the outer ones or both using the Creep mode selector.

The other two parameters let you configure how much to shift for inside (inner–most) and the outside (outer–most, those facing the cover) pages. Imposition Wizard interpolates these values depending on the position of the sheet in signature and shifts the pages accordingly.

The Calculator button below helps computing the creep parameters using the paper thickness.

Extra Options

You can print multiple copies of the same booklet using the Step and Repeat option, just define the size of the “grid” you need:

Imposition Wizard comes with Adobe Acrobat plugin, so you can make booklets directly from Acrobat, if needed. Read more about installing imposition plugin for Acrobat.

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;
• Preflight — how to check for errors before your print.

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.

Advanced

• Translation — translate Imposition Wizard to your language.

Command Line

• Basic Imposition — basic command line imposition example.