New Participant

Question

Need to create pdf with thumbnail pages from InDesign

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
August 19, 2012
11 replies
45099 views

How can I create a pdf with multiple InDesign pages on each sheet (thumbnails)? I have snow leopard, cs6. Thank you.

This topic has been closed for replies.

liondesign113

New Participant

Open you PDF in Acrobat, Print to PDF, choose Multi page layout with many options - There you go.

rob day

Community Expert

This thread has a link to the Javascript version of my thumbnail script:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign/printing-thumbnails/m-p/11886883#M417629

Benji-11

Inspiring

I know the first post was in 2012, but it was my question until an hour ago.

If the maximum number of page per sheet is 16 and you have a mac, follow these steps:

1. Export your InDesign file to a PDF file.

2. Open your file with the Preview app (Not Acrobat)

3. Click on preview(#1) and select Layout.

4. Select the number of pages (#2)

5. Save your file. (#3)

6. Be happy.

I'd like to help and I've just done.

A

AcousticDi

New Participant

I just tried something SIMPLE and it worked. Had to share for all those that have helped me solve problems in this forum!

Setup your thumbnails they way you want to print in the printer dialog box.
Click on PRINTER in the lower left of the Print Dialog Box.
When the printer screen comes up, under the PDF drop down box in the lower left, select "Save as Postscript..."
Click PRINT, prompts you select where you want to save and set the filename.
With the printer dialog box comes back up, press PRINT again.
The file will be saved in your selected location with this extension (.indd.ps)
Double click to open it with Mac Preview. Perfect thumbnails in a PDF! The Preview conversion turns .ps to .pdf.

H

HiMontgomery

New Participant

On a Mac, the way I like to do it is to start by generating a PDF from INDD. Open the PDF in Apple's "Preview" app. Ctrl+P. There are all sorts of options for layout — including "Pages per Sheet" under the layout option in the menu. Then, at the bottom left-hand of the print dialog box, you'll see the PDF button. After you've made your page-layout decisions, click PDF and choose your options for PDF delivery.

In the instance documented with the attached graphics, I selected "Mail PDF." The thumbnailed PDF is created and attached to a new email.

Maybe this helps.

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

Preview is not a reliable PDF viewer. Use Adobe Reader or Acrobat.
You should avoid creating PDF via printing. In InDesign use only Export as PDF.
If someone uses the Print > PDF he should never use Save as PDF…, but Save as Adobe PDF is to select. The first one will create a PDF via Quartz, the other one will use Adobe Distiller's library.

rob day

Community Expert

This thread's a bit old but the AppleScript below will make a new ID document with the pages of the active document placed in a matrix grid. Its dialog lets you set the number of columns and rows, the page margin, gutter, and tile scaling. Extra pages are added if needed. Because the tiles are placed pages you can make changes to the original pages and they get updated in the matrix version.

http://www.zenodesign.com/forum/MakePageThumbnails.zip

S

Screenie111

New Participant

You can create a thumbnail pdf using "Postscript file" as your printer, plus a ppd for your printer. I use my Epson ppd.

Save a .ps file, then use Acrobat to create a pdf. I have Acrobat X Pro.

Go to print setup > select paper size and thumbnail configuration, (2x2, ect.)

Printer: Postscript file, PPD: <your printer> save as a .ps file.

Go to Acrobat, File > create > pdf from file.

You will have a pdf of your thumbnails!

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

Screenie111 wrote:
You can create a thumbnail pdf using "Postscript file" as your printer, plus a ppd for your printer. I use my Epson ppd.
Save a .ps file, then use Acrobat to create a pdf. I have Acrobat X Pro.
Go to print setup > select paper size and thumbnail configuration, (2x2, ect.)
Printer: Postscript file, PPD: <your printer> save as a .ps file.
Go to Acrobat, File > create > pdf from file.
You will have a pdf of your thumbnails!

Don't use PostScript! No Distiller, no EPS. ANd even if you use postscript, don't use a device dependent PPD. Postscript is old and outdated. Leave it as fast as you can.

Wognum

Participating Frequently

I agree that this should be a feature InDesign. PDF is the way to communicate to custumers. It is 2014 after all.

Happy New Year by the way!

I am using the same workaround as Doug and it works great. If you are using Mac download PDFwriter

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfwriterformac/

and generate the contact sheet with thumbnails via the Print dialog.

Tah dah!

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

Wognum wrote:
I agree that this should be a feature InDesign. PDF is the way to communicate to custumers. It is 2014 after all.
Happy New Year by the way!
I am using the same workaround as Doug and it works great. If you are using Mac download PDFwriter
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfwriterformac/
and generate the contact sheet with thumbnails via the Print dialog.
Tah dah!

Nonsense!!!!!!

Don't use anything else to create a PDF from InDesign than InDesign and with some exceptions (like booklet function) the Print/Distiller functionality. But don't use a 3rd party low quality program to create PDFs.

Wognum

Participating Frequently

Oh, what have I missed?

It's just for generating contact sheets as pdf with one click. A feature that InDesign lacks. Do you have a better/simpler solution?

D

Doug_____456

New Participant

Go with #13 above. But first, install a 'pdf printer' (I use Cute PDF Writer on Win7/8) It installs and shows up as a printer, which you select as the printing device in the print dialog box, and you get a pdf file out of it. It exists for MAC, too. It installs ghostscript as a postscript driver, and uses that to make a pdf file. I'm pretty sure I installed the free version.

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

Doug#^*)!456 wrote:
Go with #13 above. But first, install a 'pdf printer' (I use Cute PDF Writer on Win7/8) It installs and shows up as a printer, which you select as the printing device in the print dialog box, and you get a pdf file out of it. It exists for MAC, too. It installs ghostscript as a postscript driver, and uses that to make a pdf file. I'm pretty sure I installed the free version.

I disagree! If someone works with professional software he should use only professional software to create PDFs. First place in creating PDFs is always to export a PDF from InDesign, second would be Adobe PDF ppd and Distiller or Printer.

M

mphillips18

New Participant

I really miss the ability to do this. It was great when I was sharing prelim layouts while working on my magazine. I have been printing them out as thumbnail sheets and then scanning them back into my computer and sending out a pdf that way. Kind of a horrible, round about way of doing it, but it works for lack of a better way.

MrTIFF

Participating Frequently

Another option for doing thumbnails is to use the "N Up Consecutive" setting of IDImposer. You can have whatever number of rows and columns per output page that you want. It creates a new InDesign document, which you can then write out to a small-ish PDF file using the "Smallest File Size" preset of Export to PDF. Elapsed time: likely less than a minute.

Restriction:

There is no option to create a thumbnails doc consisting of Reader Spreads. Output is page-by-page.

(You can, however, do a Printer Spreads thumbnails doc, by running IDImposer twice -- first, to do the Saddle Stitch order layout, then use N Up Consecutive to produce the thumbnails.)

Cheers,

Stephen, author of IDImposer

http://idimposer.com

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

You can also place the whole indd file in another file. No need to produce a pdf before. No need to exchange an intermediate pdf if changes come up.

You can export the final pdf. No need to use print or postscript.

K

KalNato

New Participant

Hi all. This is my first ever post anywhere on forums, so bear with me if I fail... I think what you are looking for is located in the following place:

You go to the FILE menu, select PRINT, in the PRINT window you have various options in the tabs GENERAL, SETUP, MARKS AND BLEEDS, etc... At the bottom of the tab SETUP you can check mark something called "Thumbnails" and here select the number of thumbnails you want, 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, 5x5 up to 7x7. This will print a contact sheet that looks as follows.

There are also other option to print the thumbnails in speads, single pages, etc...

Good luck!

A

anniehk

New Participant

Thanks for your input, printed thumbnails are a wonderful feature, but what i need is a Thumbnail version as a PDF ~ something of modest size than can be sent be sent via email.

and as of the latest update i am back to exporting pages (or spreads) as JPGs, and flowing them via 'update links' into a premade, mock-thumbnail INDD template. (This is a monthly publication, so i am lucky to have the same set up every time.) The jpgs will selfnumber, and if prefaced the same way each version, update nicely ~ this is convoluted, but works.

Definitely not as painless as being able to Print Thumbnails as a PDF, though.

liondesign113

New Participant

Open you PDF in Acrobat, Print to PDF, choose Multi page layout with many options - There you go.

Show more replies

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.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded