Reply To: Inside Margin Calculator?

@ Eugene

yes, it is prepress' job to apply creep to saddle-stitched artwork. however, i still think it is important that designers understand the phenomenon of creep and how prepress operators compensate for it when imposing artwork, mainly concerning cross-overs.

With the imposing software at my work (we use AGFA Apogee) the program compensates for creep by literally moves the pages closer to the spine until the centre spread is reached. This is fine for artwork where there are no cross-overs, but artwork which DOES have cross-overs need those images to remain where they were while letting the other content be adjusted. This becomes most visible on the centre-spread.

I say this after receiving a 56pp portrait saddle-stitched DL booklet last week which needed to be printed on 150gsm stock. Every page had a crossover on it, but all pages needed creep too. If I had the native files, i could have kept the cross-overs where they were on one layer, and moved the content and type towards the spine on the second layer… if i had native files!

Was good experience however in working out the increments per 2pp to move all the art (except for the cross-overs) towards the centre spreads :)