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• • March 3, 2011 at 10:48 pm #58870
    Kip

    Member

    I have been able to get saddle stitching to work perfectly if I print from a single InDesign document by going to “Print Booklet”. The problem I am having is that I can’t get it to work across several documents that are from the same book. The position of the pages is only correct from within the chapter that is selected. In other words it will put the first and last page number from the chapter on the same page but only from within that chapter not the whole book. The way saddle stitching should work is to have the first page of the book and the last page of the book on the same piece of paper. How can I get that to work? I have been flipping through books and the internet for quite some time and I can't find the answer to this.

    Your help is much appreciated. I have been working on this book for a long time (my first one) and I am looking forward to finally getting this completed!

  • March 4, 2011 at 1:52 am #58871
    Alan Gilbertson

    Participant

    The booklet feature really has no connection with the book panel, so it won't get you where you're trying to go. It was intended for short booklets that someone would print on an office printer, which as a matter of practicality are usually single documents not more than 20-24 finished pages.

    The book panel is for longer publications (hundreds of pages). These become very unwieldy, not to mention hard to farm out for editing and proofing, if they're all in one file. Any printing or export of a book must be done from the book panel flyout menu. The regular File > Print and File > Export menu items only apply to whatever individual document has focus at the time, not to the book. An InDesign document doesn't “know” (has no metadata that indicates) it is part of a book. That information is in the .indb book file.

    What you can do, if you have Acrobat, is output your book from the book panel as a single PDF, then use Acrobat to print the booklet. Open the file in Acrobat, select File > Print, and then the fun starts.

    “Booklet Printing” is, wierdly enough, one of the “Page Scaling” options. I guess they just didn't know where else to put it. Once you select that, an new button shows up labeled “Booklet subset” that lets you choose to print All the sheets — only useful if you have a printer that can print both sides in a single pass — or a subset (fronts only or backs only). You'll have to experiment with your printer to find the setting that works for you. Look under “Printing – Other ways to print PDFs” in Acrobat Help for more info.

    If you need to end up with a PDF that is already set up in printer spreads, print from Acrobat as above, but to the PDF printer.

  • March 4, 2011 at 3:11 pm #58888
    Kip

    Member

    “It was intended for short booklets that someone would print on an office printer, which as a matter of practicality are usually single documents not more than 20-24 finished pages.”

    I was printing out a short booklet that is about 42 pages or about 11 sheets of paper. I was originally told that it would be good to use the book feature even for relatively short documents but now I am almost wishing I had left the whole book in one InDesign document. The booklet will start out with a very low run so I am not ready to send it to a press just yet.

    “An InDesign document doesn't “know” (has no metadata that indicates) it is part of a book. That information is in the .indb book file.”

    It is kind of odd that InDesign calls the feature “print booklet” and then it doesn’t relate to the book panel! I understand your point on why it doesn’t work though.

    “What you can do, if you have Acrobat, is output your book from the book panel as a single PDF, then use Acrobat to print the booklet. Open the file in Acrobat, select File > Print, and then the fun starts.”

    Someone suggested that I use a plugin from within InDesign to handle the imposition. Do you think this is something that is necessary for me or are Acrobat’s print features all I need?

    Thank you for all your help. I don’t know how else I could have figured this out since InDesign books I have read don’t mention In-Design's booklet printing limitations.

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