Printer's Spreads
Pagination of Printer's Spreads
Above is an example of a typical 12 page booklet in printer's spreads. They are aligned in an "out of order" sequence. A simple way of understanding how this is done is to take 3 sheets of paper, fold them in half, and number each half. Once all pages are numbered unfold the pages and you will see the new order of page in printer's spreads.
This is done to gang several pages on one large sheet
when it prints on large presses like the one pictured below.
Stage 1:
For the next part of the assignment we will be taking your 10 pages and prepping them for pagination. The pages are currently ordered as below:
We will be adding two new pages for a title page and one blank page. Create a new file in InDesign with the following settings:
In your document look at the pages panel and go to the panel settings.
Make sure to change the settings as indicated below to allow you to move the pages inside the pages panel:
Drag page 12 from the bottom position to to the top position directly to the right of page one. Wait until you see a bracket and release the page into position. It should now look like this:
Save the new file to your desktop with the name "Print File."
Stage 2:
Once you have reordered your new document you will now need to go back to your original document and export or save as a pdf in individual pages. For this exercise we will not be using compression settings. I will go over compression in class. Make sure to change the setting from spreads to pages:
After you have your new pdfs in individual pages you will now need to re-assemble them into the new document "Print File." Match the order to the of the individual images to the new locations based on the printer spread image displayed at the top of this blog. Save your work when you finish this step.
Stage 3:
After you completed the the new assemblage of your pages into the new document you will again export these pages as pdfs. This time you will be using Spreads instead of Pages. Go to the Marks and Bleeds panel and check Crop Marks only and then export to a folder on your desktop.
Open the pdf you just created. If you followed all the steps above you pages should look like the spreads below with crop marks and center folding lines:
Now open the Page Thumbnails at the left of the document frame like below:
Select all the pages within the panel:
Right click (control click) on one of the pages and select Extract Pages.
Use the following settings and save to a destination folder:
Stage 4:
Now you will take the new pdf spreads you just created and place them into a new 11 x 17 inch document in Illustrator. You should get three to page. You will need to stack the crop marks on top of each other as show below:
Now you are ready to print to the color printer.
