Export Indesign Book file to Printer Spreads

Question

Hi there,

I am working on a product catalog that is heavy with images. It's a 72 page catalog and I want to export the entire book file as printer spreads so page 1 & 72 are printed together 2 & 71etc... I see the option in the book panel to print the book and then you can do a post script file, set up the spreads, but I don't see anywhere that you can organize the pages in the way I need them to be. Does anyone know if there is a solution to this? I can't add all the pages into 1 InDesign file because it just crashes from how much content is in there.

James Gifford—NitroPress · Accepted Answer

Has your printer requested this? Or are you assuming it's necessary for commercial printing?

Most printers with anything like a modern setup prefer single-page source files, as they will do their own spread imposition on master sheets or roll stock to maximize print job efficiency. Any printer asking for spreads is... probably very old-school and the universal advice from here would be "find another printer."

But you don't do this by rearranging your source file pages. If you have some valid, validated reason for needing to export as spreads, what you are looking for is "booklet order" or "booklet printing" which is supported by both InDesign and (with somewhat better features) Acrobat Pro. There are several workflows that will get you to that result, each with its own strengths and pitfalls, but... really. It's not something done in the modern commercial printing world, so start there.

Randy Hagan · Answer

Like everybody else is saying, I'd recommend that you let your printer handle this. They're fully equipped to make this work best with their reproduction processes, and if you've put this out for bid, pagination into printer spreads is absolutely built into the print bid(s).

But if you absolutely need, or want to do this yourself, you want to do it with two InDesign files:

One set up with single pages sequentially, like you'd hand to your printer to do the job right without you.

One set up double-wide to accommodate your printer spreads, and guides for placing page content quickly and consistently in your printer spreads.

When you're setting up your printer spreads, keep these three rules in mind:

The Odd Page Number always goes to the right.

The Even Page Number always goes to the left.

When you add the Page Numbers up, they will add up to one more than the total number of pages.

So Page 72 (the last one) plus Page 1 (the first one) adds up to 73 — one more than the total number of pages in your 72 page book. Page 40 would go to the left, because the Even Page Number always goes to the left, and Page 33 would match up with it because the Odd Page Number always goes to the right. And you know those two pages go together, because when you add up 40 and 33, it adds up to 73, one more than the total number of 72 pages in your book.

Hope this helps,

Randy

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