Print booklet in Indesign not user friendly

[NormaPierce]

I'm using the latest update of Indesign on OS 10.13.4.

20-page booklet, 5.5x8.5.

The preview of the imposition looked perfect, but the .ps file changed the page orientation to vertical with the ensuing spreads not fitting the space. No settings I tried made any difference.

On deadline, I had to pay the printer to set up the file.

Very annoying.

I used to do this routinely around 4 years ago with a much lower version of Indesign -- and also back in the old-old days even with Pagemaker. What happened?

I read everything I could find online including Adobe Support files regarding this, and nothing I could find addressed this problem -- altho I was able to find solutions earlier in the process. I would like to see a better, fuller explanation of the process of imposing printer's pages.

Thanks for your help!

[kglad]

[moved from Adobe Creative Cloud to InDesign]

[BobLevine]

That’s the printer’s job anyway. Any printer charging you extra to do this is one you should run from.

[NormaPierce]

It would  have been nice to know this before I spent an hour with Adobe's support pages. Sorry. This is on Adobe.

As it turned out, I did not need a different printer -- just a different support system. All is well now, time lost but lesson learned.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

Agree with Bob!

Imposition depends upon so much that is outside the designer's hands -- and responsibility. Printer (digital, ink, toner, traditional offiset, etc.), press-sheet size, run quantity, etc. all affect how a job will be imposed and printed.

Geeze, Louise, even the local office supply store will take your file and impose it for copier-quality printing...at no cost. The software is built into their prepress workflow.

When we designers take on this responsibility, we're also letting the printer off the hook for doing a lousy job...and they can also blame the designer for incorrect imposition, forcing the designer to pay for the bad print job. Prepress functions should be performed by the printer, not the designer.

Find a better printer!

[NormaPierce]

Very unfriendly support forum. The printer was not at fault. I searched Adobe for how to do something I thought I needed to do -- and got a wrong answer.

[rob day]

and got a wrong answer

Unless you see a Staff badge the answers you are getting are from users not Adobe employees.

You are welcome to think imposition should be done from the layout and not at output, but highend imposition tools never have and probably never will be included in InDesign. Print Booklet, as its name implies, is meant for simple desktop applications like making dummies or art books and is not intended for press impositions.

Also there are a number of problems with postscript/distilled output (flattened transparency and poor color management), and it has been abandoned by most users in favor of  the more flexible and efficient PDF export.

[NormaPierce · Accepted solution]

I never thought imposition *should* be done from Indesign, and after a difficult morning yesterday, I now understand that it's  rarely even a good idea!

I appreciate those who participated in this discussion, especially the extremely valuable information from the staff contributor.

My concern is (still) with Adobe support and the following "help" page: Create printer spreads for booklet printing in Adobe InDesign

This was the top result in my original search for info and of course was the one I went to. I spent a bunch of time following all the instructions. On deadline, of course. When I never was able to get an acceptable result, I thought I must be missing something or there was some trick to it and went to the Forum.

I feel that the Adobe help page should be amended with a prominent addition, such as this:

     "Print booklet" is not recommended for preparing a document for commercial printing.

     Many commercial printing companies include imposition in their bids and estimates at low or no cost.

     These instructions are meant only for DIY printing on a desktop printer.

Best regards to all.

[Bevi Chagnon @ PubCom]

NormaPierce​, That's a great suggestion to make on the UserVoice forum, the place to make suggestions directly to Adobe's engineering and product development teams. It's at Adobe InDesign Feedback

RE: the "help" from Adobe's support, usually they're good but given your specific topic, I doubt many people staffing the help desk would have understood what you were trying to do. Imposition by graphic designers is something we did 20-25 years ago because not much was available back in the Pleistocene epoch of desktop publishing.

In this discussion, you heard from long-time industry veterans who knew better and tried to warn you away from danger. My apologies for it sounding harsh, abrupt, or insulting in any way. That wasn't our intent!

RE: the "staff contributor" on this discussion, there wasn't one. The "badges" you see are MVP and ACP, which represent industry professionals who volunteer their time to answer questions in this forum. Actual Adobe staff do chime in from time to time and you'll see the Adobe logo underneath their name.

Best regards to you!

[MW Design]

I impose for only a single print establishment these days. He has no inclination to modernize. I use him for both his great two and three color work, service and price.

If you have need to do this once in a while, it pays to purchase one of the relatively low-cost plug-ins or stand-alone imposition software tools, or purchase pdfToolbox, which has other uses than imposition.

[elizabeths61297746]

I am having this same issue, also on a deadline. I will ask my printer in the morning if they can do it but it's a small mom and pop shop, and up until now, everything I have done with them has been different from my experiences working with larger shops (he doesn't want crop and bleed marks for instance). While I appreciate the insights on this thread about this being something that typically the print shop handles, it seems to me that the issue with the preview not matching the export is still a bug with InDesign, or something (could be on acrobat's end I suppose though ID seems more likely to me...). I have been looking into this for a while now, trying to figureo out how to fix it, to no avail. The preview looks fine, no warnings or anything. But then opening the .ps file in Acrobat shows that it is on vertical paper instead of horizontal which cuts off the image and obviously can't be printed. screenshots attached

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

I don't use Booklet option - but if you have Acrobat installed - you should also have PDF Printer installed in the system - what if you print to it - instead of printing to PS file? 

[BobLevine]

As pointed out in the help section for this "feature," it is not intended to create a new file. Create printer spreads for booklet printing in Adobe InDesign. Anything you are doing with postscript (which I will point out is an archaic format) is unsupported for creating printer spreads.

Same advice to you as all the others: Find another printer!

[rob day]

Hi @elizabeths61297746 , If you are trying to Print a .ps file, you need to install the Acrobat PDF 9.0 PPD, which can be downloaded here:

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/kb/add-acrobat-ppd.html

Even a small press should be able to handle imposition. Do you really want to be responsible for print related properties like creep, signature size, page spacing etc?

[elizabeths61297746]

Thank you for sharing this. Unfortunately it looks like the download at the link you shared isn't working. I tried two different browsers and it didn't work in either one. I was able to get what I think and hope is the same file from a link in a comment here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/postscript-trouble-in-indesign/td-p/9595327

Seems like the right file... though it doesn't seem to have worked. Put it in the folder but can't get it to show up in the print booklet panel. Restarted my computer but that didn't help.

And, yes I am back to doing this... printer came back and has different problems with imposition. The software he uses adds a white border so he's not set up for imposing full bleed documents. Not going to switch printers on my timeline, so I decided to give this a try and manually impose it if I have to (Honestly I'll probably do that next). It's a 16 page booklet so I'm hoping the creep/amount of paper the binding takes up won't be a big deal and my margins are sizeable enough I think I'm ok. Luckily it's a pretty small print run too.

Again, thank you for taking the time to help me.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

If it's only 16 pages - you can do it "manually".

What I would suggest - export PDF with a name "ImposSource.pdf" - with all the extras - Bleeds, cropmarks, etc. - and then place it on a spreads in a new document - twice the size - with CROP TO MEDIA - then extend OUTSIDE edges of the PDFs to show the extras. 

Looks like InDesign "no longer" (??) imports full info but just places cropped version?? Or it never worked like that??

So you would need to do it differently:

- create your document with the same HEIGHT - but twice as WIDE,

- then, using A5 as an example - place PDFs on the LEFT side with CenterX = 297/4 = 74.25mm and CenterY = 210/2 = 105mm, on the RIGHT side - CenterX = 297/4*3 = 222.75mm and CenterY the same as for Left - you can do the math directly in the InDesign:

- then create Guideline in the center - 297/2 = 148.5mm

- then crop PDFs on the inside:

(Sorry for maybe to detailed explanation - but just in case, for others in the future)

Order of the PDFs you can get from the mockup - or from the Booklet Preview.

Then save it as a template "Impos.indd" for future use. 

Next time - just re-export "ImposSource.pdf" and refresh links in the "Impos.indd". 

Of course the same "techinque" can be used for longer publications - even when folding is required.

[rob day]

Might be a permissions problem?

I posted an imposition script in this thread, which you are welcome to try—make sure you get a dummy proof before going to press:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/how-to-print-a-specific-spread-in-the-booklet-fo...

[elizabeths61297746]

Point taken, everyone. I appreciate your input. It turns out my printer can do it. He must have misunderstood or not heard me when we initially talked about this project and I told him I was planning to do the imposition. Or he assumed I knew what I was doing, which I clearly didn't! So in this case he will be taking care of it. However, I was hoping to do some small scale printing at home as well, so when I do that, I will play around with doing the imposition during the printing process from Acrobat as opposed to doing it through InDesign. All of that said, the issue I ran into still seems like an Adobe bug to me – perhaps it is, but the issue is made irrelevant because no designers are expected to do this and the process I was trying to use is archaic and no longer supported. Thank you again – I sweated too much over this one!

[rob day]

All of that said, the issue I ran into still seems like an Adobe bug to me

It’s not a bug, but you need to correctly install the Acrobat PDF 9.0 PPD in order to set a custom page Setup when saving a PostScript file.

Also, for in house impositions you are welcome to try the imposition script linked in this thread:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/how-to-print-a-specific-spread-in-the-booklet-fo...

[elizabeths61297746]

Ok thank you I appreciate that. When I opened the .ps file with Acrobat it was running it through Acrobat Distiller and I thought that was sufficient but obviously not.

[rob day]

The PPD has to be installed in your ID application folder exactly like this:

[Ddog9]

You shouldn't have to do any imposition if you're using a printer with a standard pdf workflow like Prinergy. Export you ID file as a high res pdf with 1/8" bleeds and crop marks and the printer should be able to easily work with that.