Digital Media Designer: Tutorial: Printing Duplexed Booklets from Adobe InDesign

by Greg Hatem
Special to Digital Media Designer
http://www.alap.com

[Editor's note: This week we have our second tutorial from the good folks at A Lowly Apprentice Productions (ALAP). ALAP is a software developer that makes plugins for both QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign. This week we're presenting a tutorial on creating a duplexed booklet in a laser printer using ALAP's InBooklet. We'll f more of ALAP's tutorials on Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress in the coming weeks. —Dave]

InDesign documents are in a format called reader spreads. Meaning, the front cover is the first page with the back cover being the last page. At times a format called Printers Spreads, where the first page is output with the last page, is required for final output. This is also useful when trying to build a composite with your laser printer.

This will demonstrate how to use InBooklet to create a duplexed comp with your laser printer.

Setting up the Layout Tab
InBooklet gives you the ability to specify what pages, or range of pages to impose into printer spreads in the Layout Tab.

Our document is 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 in which we are going to print a composite to our laser printer. Set up the Layout Tab with the following:

Pages: All
Style: 2-up Saddle Stitch
All Margins: 0
Gap, Bleed, Creep: 0

Set up the Printing Tab
InBooklet also offers you the ability to specify what Spreads or Range of Spreads to print. Since we are going to duplex the final output to our laser printer, we will specify what spreads to print in the Print Dialog box. Setup the Printing Tab with the following:

Pages: All
Printer's Marks: All Unchecked

Since our document size is 5 1/2 x 8 1/2, we do not want to add any marks at this time.

Preview the imposition
InBooklet offers a Preview Tab that enables you to view the imposition setup. This will allow you to make an necessary changes to the Layout Tab and/or Printing Tab, before any printing is done.

Click OK to continue the printing process.

Set up Print Options
Here we set what spreads to print.

In the Advanced Page Controls section, set Options to Odd Pages Only. After printing the odd spreads, place the pages back into the laser printer (making sure they are inserted correctly) and print again specifying Even Pages Only for Options.

Set Color to Composite Mode and click Print to continue the printing process.

Final output
Printing this document using the outlined sequence will result in a booklet that has copy printed on both sides of the paper. This can then be folded in half to simulate the printed piece.

When printing spreads greater than your paper size, specify a reduction scale factor.

Changes that need to be made when printing a composite vs. printing final film output is to add margins, bleeds, and to specify crop and registration marks. When printing to final film, specify Both Pages for Options.

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Greg Hatem is the product manager at A Lowly Apprentice Productions. He is a graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology and has a degree in print technology. Greg can be reached at Greg@alap.com. For more information about ALAP, visit http://www.alap.com.