Participant

Question

Exporting Booklet Troubleshooting

Forum|Forum|11 months ago
August 28, 2025
3 replies
867 views

Hi there, I'm an InDesign newbie, self taught. I am making a zine that is tabloaid size (11x17 inches) I have my spreads in InDesign setup and would like a PDF booklet to take into kinkos to print. When I go to "print booklet" and change my printer to postscript it keeps cutting off my PDF because the page size isn't correct. I can't change the page size in postscript because it's greyed out. If there is a better way I'm all ears, I just want a booklet, print ready file I can fold and staple on my own!

Thanks 🙂

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

Kinko's or any reputable copy shop will know what to do with single-page PDFs. This is the business they are in. Try that first.

The main issue with creating a booklet PDF is that the mechanism for doing so involves printing flattened Postscript to a PS file, which can affect your output if you are using a lot of transprency effects, etc. since it's not your own printer you are sending it to.

If you were printing to your own printer, this wouldn't necessarily be an issue, so you could try do the Booklet approach, using the PPD that is mentioned in another reply.

"When I go to "print booklet" and change my printer to postscript it keeps cutting off my PDF because the page size isn't correct"

This is because you more than likley selected Postscript File > Device Independent in the Print settings. This will not work, as this does not include any page size specifications, so when you Distill it, Distiller assumes the default page size (which is Letter) so the remainder gets cut off. However, when you use the AdobePDF9.PPD, this allows you to select the page size you need to conatin your imposed pages and that will be included in the PS.

davecourtemanche

Legend

You can work around by changing the pages sizes in Distiller and fix it there. Had to do this for funky sized booklets that a client wanted to print on their own copier.

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

Sure, but there's no need to do this if the proper PPD is used. Makes it easier in the end, especially if one sets up a Print Preset with all the relevant settings.

K

KFryDrawsAuthor

Participant

@Dave Creamer of IDEAS and @Peter Spier I added the ADPDF9.ppd to my presets in a PPDs file. That gave me the option to have a drop down PPD which allowed me to change the paper size for the PostScript file... thanks for both your help! (side note, Adobe should absolutely consider making this a simpler process.

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

Glad you worked it out.

Technically, it's Apple's doing. They wanted control over the PDF printing process by making it part of the Mac OS (this was a long time ago). As you can see, it doesn't always come in handy. Windows still has the Adobe PDF print driver that _used_ to be on Mac too. It's very easy to print to PDF with the Print Booklet feature on Windows.

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

Are you on a Mac?

When you change the printer to PostScript, what is the PPD set to (below printer setting)?

Can Kinkos actually print a 22x17 page size, double-sided?

(unless you are doing an 8.5x11 as spreads)

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

K

KFryDrawsAuthor

Participant

Yes, I'm on a Mac

Full size of the spread is 11x17 (8.5x11 pages)

I'm attaching a screenshot of what the settings look like currently.

Peter Spier

Community Expert

@KFryDraws you have several options here.

If you want to use Print Booklet to print to a PDF, you will need to install the ADPDF9.ppd file. You can download it from me at https://spaces.hightail.com/receive/yzPMgVsXKD

If you trust Kinkos to know what they are doing, you can export a single pages PDF (which will allow you to have live transparency) and let them perint the booklet using the booklet printing feature in Acrobat.

You can use a script to do the impostion. A good one can be found at https://shared-assets.adobe.com/link/3bfdb004-f188-4f3d-5904-d82dd8f8e2d1

EDIT: the link to the script seems to be dead

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.