During the recent CreativePro Week conference, an attendee asked me if there was a way to separate pages via a script in InDesign. She was working on a spiral bound project with bleed on all four sides. Since her document was created with facing pages spreads, there was no bleed in the gutter. Working for a commercial printing company, I understand the desire to get your document correct right from the beginning, which includes building it to the final trim size with proper bleed and margins.
The traditional solution for having bleed on all four sides was to separate the pages.
To do this, go to the Pages panel menu and turn off Allow Document Pages to Shuffle.
Then, choose File > Document Setup and turn off Facing Pages.
You’ll see the all the pages shift to the left in the Pages panel, but the spreads will remain intact.
Next, in the Pages panel, Command/Ctrl-click on the odd or even pages to select them.
Finally, with the Page tool selected, change the X: value in the Control panel (for right-hand pages, add 0.5 inches; for left-hand pages, subtract 0.5 inches).
You’ll see the pages move apart in the document window, but not in the Pages panel. Now your document can bleed on all four sides.
That method works but it’s time-consuming. Fortunately, now there’s a much better solution.
After hearing about my conversation at CreativePro Week, Keith Gilbert wrote a script called Separate Spreads. It splits the Facing Pages (or Non-Facing Pages) so you can add bleed in the gutter. Not only does it separate each spread, it also moves everything on the page including Parent Page items. This can be a huge time saver if you regularly have to separate spreads for spiral-bound books that need to bleed on all sides.
Some take aways: (1) CreativePro Week is a great opportunity to not only learn, but make connections, and solve problems. (2) If you’re struggling with a tedious and time-consuming task in InDesign, there might be a script that can help.
By the way, Keith has written many other useful scripts. You can find them all on the Scripts page at GilbertConsulting.com.
This article was last modified on June 20, 2023
This article was first published on June 20, 2023
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I am still shocked and confused that InDesign hasn’t developed an easy way to do this within the app itself. Why should users have to come up with workarounds to do one of the most basic and obviously necessary tasks?!
Any motivation Adobe had for finishing half-baked features and fixing bugs vanished long ago, when it became clear there was no meaningful competition and no threat of losing customers. At this point, there’s no business case for them to invest in improving print production features. But if you could figure out a way to call it “AI” you might get their attention.
This is wonderful! I’ve been using the traditional solution for years. I can’t wait to try it! Like wheels on suitcases, I wish someone (Indesign) would have done this sooner.
Maybe I’m missing something but we did spine bleed a couple of ways:
BC-Spine-FC pdf. Import into PREPS and set the bleed for each page.
Or create BC,Spine and FC as separate single page docs with bleed all around. Easy to position crossover images as top left corner was the offset point of the page so position by numbers. Again, using PREPS to make plates.
I’m simply not sure how helpful this script could be.
This script is aimed at the body pages in a spiral bound project. It gives the designer a way to add bleed on all four sides while maintaining the “spread”. For covers, I recommend one spread (BC + Spine + FC). We also use PREPS, but not everyone does.
The script could check for imagers going across the spread, duplicate the image (keeping the same layer order), then cut the image’s box frames down to the center fold. Basically it makes two copies of one image, half on the left page, the other half on the right.
Keith, i’m wondering if you have thoughts on a way to deal with images that run across the spread? This script works great in general, but if you have an image going across the spread, it doesn’t break into two pieces. i’m guessing the answer is no and we need to go through and manually fix all of those, as we’ve always done. But hey, it’s worth asking.
In those cases I usually place the image twice, once for each page, aligning appropriately to left or right edges.
Hi Greg, Good point–my initial thought is when you have an image that runs across the spread, you would manually move those pages together. Not sure how many pages (spreads) that would normally be?
I just updated the script today (6/21/2023) with 2 changes: The script now handles documents with left and right margins, or inside/outside margins, that aren’t equal. And, the pages are now offset 1/4″ + .1pt instead of 1/2″. This is enough to accomodate the standard 1/8″ bleed for both the left and right pages, plus .1pt “extra” so the bleed boundary appears in InDesign.
You are my favorite person in the world right now. Thank you.
Cool! Thanks, Keith!