Inspiring

Question

Page Number Positioning Question

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
March 15, 2019
2 replies
1500 views

(Mac OS, InDesign 2019)

I have a book set up as shown in the screen capture below. If I go to File--> Document Setup, then uncheck "Facing Pages", all my automatic page numbers appear at the lower left side of each page.

But I don't want that. I want it to maintain the appropriate left or right positions of the page numbers as they will appear when the book is printed.

So for example, if Page 2's number appropriately appears at left, I want Page 3's number to appropriately appear on the right.

Is there a way to tell the program to respect this rule, while viewing the document in non-facing pages mode?

Thanks-

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M

Migintosh

Legend

M_G6 wrote
(Mac OS, InDesign 2019)
If I go to File--> Document Setup, then uncheck "Facing Pages", all my automatic page numbers appear at the lower left side of each page.

That could happen if the alignment of your facing-page document's page numbers are set to Away From Spine (as they should be, if that's what you want).

If you change a facing-page document to non-facing-pages, and move them into a facing-page view like this:

…there will be no spine to align away from, and you will get this:

M_G6 wrote
(Mac OS, InDesign 2019)
Is there a way to tell the program to respect this rule, while viewing the document in non-facing pages mode?

I'm not sure why you would want a book that will be printed in facing pages to be designed with non-facing pages, unless you want bleed at the spine, which is rarely necessary. But, if that's what you really want, you have to use a different master for each side of your fake spread, and if you add a single page in the middle, you will have to flip the master pages for everything after. Not a good option. Best to stick with facing pages.

Johnny SokkoAuthor

Inspiring

Migintosh wrote
I'm not sure why you would want a book that will be printed in facing pages to be designed with non-facing pages, unless you want bleed at the spine, which is rarely necessary. But, if that's what you really want, you have to use a different master for each side of your fake spread, and if you add a single page in the middle, you will have to flip the master pages for everything after. Not a good option. Best to stick with facing pages.

A lot of this is caused by my general lack of understanding the program (although I am making every effort to learn it!).

Currently at work, we build 40-page booklets in InDesign. The book is assembled, then the pages are then shuffled to the owner's content in InDesign. Our printer requires we:

1. Export the InDesign file as a single file PDF.

2. Open that file in Acrobat, then Extract all pages as individual pages.

3. Upload all extracted pages to their website.

They require each page to have a bleed all the way around.

Here's what my facing pages look like in my InDesign book template (the pages have blank boxes, currently):

The container boxes here are set up at the bleed size of the Photoshop advertisements which go in every box (one box per page). When I export this InDesign file as it is, the bleed in the spine area overlaps into the left-hand page. This is evident when I open the multi-page PDF file after exporting.

If I uncheck facing pages in InDesign, I can export a PDF file containing all pages, with bleeds all around, and of course no overlap. The problem is that all page numbers default to a left-hand position, on every page. I was just trying to find a way to fix that.

Maybe someone can tell me, should my container boxes not overlap the spine? Is that really the right way to use InDesign?

EDIT: I just inquired with my company's printer. That told me they don't require any bleed on the "spine" side of the pages. It's looking like there's some age-old standard someone established long ago here at work, without the proper knowledge of understanding what the printer actually requires. Hoo-boy...

M

Migintosh

Legend

M_G6 wrote
Maybe someone can tell me, should my container boxes not overlap the spine? Is that really the right way to use InDesign?

Generally speaking, they don't need to, but after reading your workflow, there will always seem to be some last-minute tweaking you will need to do. For example, since you don't need the Photoshop image that you will import into every page to bleed at the spine, but it will bleed top, bottom and away-from-spine, you could set up your image frames to have three bleeds, but not the spine. But, if a page shifts from left to right, you will have what had been a bleed off of the left side of a left page, now bleeding into the left page once the page has become a right page. And, something that had been a right page with no bleed at the spine will need bleed now that it is a left page.

What I suggest is that you design with the image frames set to your page size, with no bleeds, while you are designing. Once the client has told you where to shift the pages and you are ready to PDF, then you will have to pull out the bleeds on every page. That's something most people would rather not do if they didn't have to, but with what the client wants, I'm not sure there is a way around it.

A script to pull out the bleeds will be the easiest way around that, but I'm not a script guy, so I can't make one for you. You could ask over at the scripting forum, but here's a work-around that isn't that hard to do, and doesn't take too much time.

If you select the full-page image frame on your first right-sided page, you can select the center-left dot on the position proxy:

…and add your bleed amount to the width, and twice your bleed amount to the height (which will take care of the top and bottom). Because of the position proxy selection, the added width will be added to the left, and the added height will be added from the center, so top and bottom will be equal.

If you then select the image frame on the next available right-side page (p3), you can go to Object>Transform Again>Transform Sequence Again (or use the keyboard shortcut Option Command 4), you won't have to plug in the numbers again. Then do the same for all of the right-sided pages. To do the left-sided pages, just change the proxy to right center, select the first left-page image frame and add the same to the width and height, and use the same keyboard shortcut on the even-numbered pages.

After that, export to PDF and use Acrobat to split it into individual pages. They won't have bleeds at the spine, but at this point, it will have been decided which pages will be in what left-to-right positions, so it won't matter. Of course, if they ask for a correction that moves a page to a new position, you will have to do this all over again, but I'm not sure there's a way around that.

I hope this all makes sense.

S

SJRiegel

Legend

Here is a trick that might work for you.

https://indesignsecrets.com/breaking-pages-apart-to-bleed-off-a-spine.php