Color Bars

Imposition Wizard lets you add automatically generated and pre–configured PDF color bars to imposed files. You can configure the position, rotation and other parameters of the added color bars to make exactly the result you need.

Automatic Color Bars

The automatic color bars can display processing (CMYK) and/or spot colors of the document (if any).

You can add one using the "+" button at the top of the Marks panel and selecting Color Bar (auto) from the drop–down list:

Adding automatic color bar

The Colors selection lets you switch between CMYK, Spot and CMYK + Spot options and the color bar displays exactly that.

Note that if the document doesn’t have spot colors and the Colors option is set to Spot, the color bar will not be shown.

Also note that if CMYK is selected and the document doesn’t have processing colors, they will be shown in the color bar anyway.

Here’s what happens if the color bar is switched to spot colors only:

Automatic color bar shows only spot colors

See the PDF color bars section below for more information about other options, as they are the same for both types of color bars.

PDF Color Bars

Imposition Wizard can also use pre–created color bars in PDF format. You can use the built–in ones or provide your own.

To add a color bar click the "+" button at the top of the Marks panel and select the Color Bar (PDF) option in the popup menu:

Adding color bar element in Imposition Wizard

The parameters of the added color bar are displayed on the right:

Color Bar Tiling

The color bar image may not fit well to the imposition layout. It may be too short or too long, or you may want to repeat the image a few times to cover the whole output sheet. The Tiled option lets you do exactly that. Here is a color bar with the tiling mode off:

Color bar with tiling mode off

The color bar is quite short and covers just a part of the pages grid. Here is the same color bar with the tiling mode enabled:

Color bar with tiling mode enabled

Imposition Wizard placed a few copies of the color bar image to cover the whole length of the page block. If the Relative to content option is off, the color bar is aligned to the sheet instead and then the tiled color bars are match the sheet dimensions instead:

Color bar aligned to the sheet with tiling mode enabled

Depending on the Relative to content option and the Location parameter Imposition Wizard automatically adjusts the dimensions of the tiled color bars to fill the expected space.

Color Bar Images

Imposition Wizard comes with a few pre–defined color bars and you can choose between them using the Image parameter on the right panel. If you want to use your own images, you need to copy them as PDF files into a special folder of Imposition Wizard.

To open the folder click the Open color bars folder link at the bottom of the right panel:

Opening color bars folder

or click File → Useful Folders → Color Bars item in the main menu of Imposition Wizard. A Finder or Explorer window will pop up with the color bars folder. You need to copy your color bars as PDF files there and restart Imposition Wizard. Then you will be able to select your files from the drop–down list of the Images parameter.

Your color bar image must be designed as horizontal (color elements running from left to right) in order to be properly displayed in Imposition Wizard.

Color Bar Size

Imposition Wizard lets you scale color bars using the Size parameter in the right panel. As color bars may be tiled and may have different dimensions, the Size parameters actually works by configuring the narrow dimensions of a color bar. For instance for vertical color bars, the size defines their width:

Configuring the width of vertical color bar with size parameter

For horizontal color bars the same parameter configures the height of the image:

Configuring the height of horizontal color bar with size parameter

Note that tiling does not affect the Size parameter as it works along the longer side of the color bar.

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