Is there a way to print 2 spreads per page in Indesign booklet?

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
July 20, 2017
2 replies
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I am totally new to InDesign and I am working on a 52 page booklet in Letter paper. As my pages are small, 5.5" x 4.25" each, I want to save some paper and print on double side as well. So far I was only able to Preview half Letter 1 spread per page in Print. I tried search online for similar questions but no such luck.

My booklet is consist of 1 image per page, so I can certainly re-do the line up. Any idea how I should go about doing this? I am beginning to think InDesign might not be able to do what I need here. Would it be easier to just put 4 image on 1 page (after I figure out which page goes where on line up), and do everything manually?

Any tips and input would be much appreciated. Thanks!

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rob day

Community Expert

I am beginning to think InDesign might not be able to do what I need here.

What you are describing is a 4-up, 7 page signature imposition. Print Booklet will only do 2-up impositions, so you won't be able to do it with Print Booklet.

You could setup an 8.5x11 imposition document and place the pages from your 4.25"x5.5" document. You would have to rotate the pages and figure out the signatures. I'm guessing you will have a huge creep problem if you staple a 56 page booklet with that small of a trim size.

Here is an 4-up imposition for 8-pages:

Bill Silbert

Community Expert

Printing on both sides of the paper is called Duplex printing and is only available as an automatic feature on higher end laser printers. These kind of printers will automatically print on both sides of the page and spit it out in nearly perfect register. If you're talking about the average user with an ink-jet printer or a small laser printer than it will have to be done by putting the paper through twice. There are some ink-jets that actually do offer an option for double-sided printing but that still requires putting the paper through twice manually. In either case it is not possible to put a booklet that has the cover as a single page and the inside as reader spreads through for double side because that would result in the cover being centered on the back of the first spread and the rest of the spreads not backed up correctly. If you do want to do two-sided printing with single pages then InDesign does allow you to print all of the odd pages, turn the paper over and then print all of the even pages. Make sure that your content is exactly centered on the pages for accurate alignment (although some ink-jets I've tried this on require some adjustment as centering doesn't exactly line up). See screen shot for how to choose even and odd pages. Note: even and odd printing is only available when printing single pages:

kate28356395Author

Participant

Thanks for the detailed explanation on the printing process. I appreciate it. I believe one of my printer has duplex printing and one does not. I will play around with both to see how I want to proceed with printing. Thanks for pointing out printing the odd pages and even pages separately, I will keep that in mind.

Assume I can line up the front and back cover and the pages all in correct sequence when print, do you know if it's possible to print more than 1 spread on the same page, like side by side? Or does InDesign only allow you to print 1 spread per page?

Thanks.

Bill Silbert

Community Expert

InDesign offers a Print Booklet feature which will take multiple spreads and gang them up but it actually makes them into a continuous spread like a gatefold and I don't think that is what you're looking for. You can check out the feature under the File Menu. The Thumbnails option un the Print Dialog Box setup tab will print multiple pages at one time but it automatically shrinks them to fit your page size.

As far as lining up your pages so that they can be printed two-sided you will have to set them up in Printer Spreads and since the choice of even or odd pages is not available when printing spreads you will have to specify what pages are to print on each run through the printer. See screen shot below:

In the picture on the left I've shown how an eight page booklet should be set up for printer spreads. On the right I've shown how to send the pages for the first run through the printer. Note that the pages specified match their absolute place in the document as shown in the pages panel not their actual printer spread page numbers. By the way to set up a document like this with all spreads use single pages rather than facing pages and make sure that "Allow Document Pages to Shuffle" is turned off in the Page Panel pull-down menu.

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