Imposition is one of the fundamental steps in the prepress printing process. It consists of the arrangement of the printed product's pages on the printer's sheet, in order to obtain faster printing, simplify binding and reduce paper waste.

Wikipedia

Use this tool to impose your PDF file: you will get a processed PDF files that you can print at home or at a profesional printer.

Step 1: What do you want to print?

All layouts assume that your are printing a PDF files with pages much smaller than your actual paper (that is, at least two pages will be printed on each paper page). Choose a layout depending on what you indend to do with this file, or how you would like to bind it.

🔗 Saddle stitch Choose

A newspaper or magazine, bound by stapling through the bend line.

Short explaination of layout saddle.
🔗 Flash cards Choose

Individual cards, with either a common back, or different backs matching the front. Useful to print playing cards with a common back, or a set of cards with the question on the front, and the answers on the back.

Short explaination of layout cards.
🔗 N-up Choose

As many input pages as possible on each output page, in no particular order.

Short explaination of layout pdfautonup.
🔗 Hardcover Choose

A book with a lot of pages, that will be gathered in several quires, which will be sewed together to form the book.

Short explaination of layout hardcover.
🔗 One-page zine Choose

A small zine of eight pages printed on a single page (the back can be used to print a full-page poster).

Short explaination of layout onepagezine.
🔗 Wire Choose

A book that will be bound using the punch and bind method.

Short explaination of layout wire.
🔗 Copy-cut-fold Choose

Several copies of a tiny book (a few pages, much smaller than the output page).

Short explaination of layout copycutfold.
🔗 Cut-stack-fold Choose

A small book (with a few pages, much smaller than the output pages), bounded by stapling together one single stack of paper.

Short explaination of layout cutstackfold.

Step 2: Select a PDF file

Step 3: Customize

For simple tasks, you might be happy with default values and skip to the next step.
Output format Output format can be set by defining the output format (the signature is then computed to fit this output format), or by setting the signature (output format is then computed).
Put as much source pages into the destination page of the given size (note that margins are ignored when computing this; if margins are set (see below), the resulting file might be larger than the required format).
Same as above, but with custom paper size.
Width
Height
Size of the destination pages (e.g. 2x3): this represents the number of sheets you will get after having cut each printed sheet.
Width
Height

Resize input pages If set, input pages will be resized before being imposed.
Same as above, but with custom paper size.
Width
Height
Scale
Repeat input file Set this to act as if your file was repeated several times. It might be useful with some layouts, or useless with others…
Repeat
Binding edge
Bind
Last pages Number of pages to keep as last pages. Useful to keep the back cover as a back cover.
Last pages
Group paper sheets If set, repeat the cutting-folding instructions above for every group of sheets. You get several sections, that you have to bind together to get a proper book.
Sheets
Margins
Input margin
Output margin
Add marks?
Output format Output format can be set by defining the output format (the signature is then computed to fit this output format), or by setting the signature (output format is then computed).
Put as much source pages into the destination page of the given size (note that margins are ignored when computing this; if margins are set (see below), the resulting file might be larger than the required format).
Same as above, but with custom paper size.
Width
Height
Size of the destination pages (e.g. 2x3): this represents the number of sheets you will get after having cut each printed sheet.
Width
Height

Resize input pages If set, input pages will be resized before being imposed.
Same as above, but with custom paper size.
Width
Height
Scale
Repeat input file Set this to act as if your file was repeated several times. It might be useful with some layouts, or useless with others…
Repeat
Margins
Input margin
Output margin
Add marks?
Output format
Put as much source pages into the destination page of the given size (note that margins are ignored when computing this; if margins are set (see below), the resulting file might be larger than the required format).
Same as above, but with custom paper size.
Width
Height

Resize input pages If set, input pages will be resized before being imposed.
Same as above, but with custom paper size.
Width
Height
Scale
Repeat input file Set this to more than one to repeat input file.
If file has one page, equivalent to fit (see below). If file has more than one page, do not repeat (equivalent to repeat once below).
Repeat a fixed number of times.
Repeat
Repeat as many times as necessary so that there is no empty cell.
Orientation If automatic, use the orientation that fits the more input pages.
Orientation
Algorithm Algorithm used to arrange source documents into destination documents. This program tries to put as many copies of the source document into the destination document, with the following constraint.
documents can overlap (a bit), or leave blank spaces between them, but as little as possible.
the gap length between documents is fixed, and a minimum destination margin is respected.
Output margin
Gap
Output format Output format can be set by defining the output format (the signature is then computed to fit this output format), or by setting the signature (output format is then computed).
Put as much source pages into the destination page of the given size (note that margins are ignored when computing this; if margins are set (see below), the resulting file might be larger than the required format).
Same as above, but with custom paper size.
Width
Height
Size of the destination pages (e.g. 2x3): this represents the number of sheets you will get after having cut each printed sheet.
Width
Height

Resize input pages If set, input pages will be resized before being imposed.
Same as above, but with custom paper size.
Width
Height
Scale
Repeat input file Set this to act as if your file was repeated several times. It might be useful with some layouts, or useless with others…
Repeat
Binding edge
Bind
Last pages Number of pages to keep as last pages. Useful to keep the back cover as a back cover.
Last pages
Group paper sheets If set, repeat the cutting-folding instructions above for every group of sheets. You get several sections, that you have to bind together to get a proper book.
Sheets
Margins
Input margin
Output margin
Add marks?

Resize input pages If set, input pages will be resized before being imposed.
Same as above, but with custom paper size.
Width
Height
Scale
Binding edge
Bind
Last pages Number of pages to keep as last pages. Useful to keep the back cover as a back cover.
Last pages
Margins
Output margin
Add marks?
Output format Output format can be set by defining the output format (the signature is then computed to fit this output format), or by setting the signature (output format is then computed).
Put as much source pages into the destination page of the given size (note that margins are ignored when computing this; if margins are set (see below), the resulting file might be larger than the required format).
Same as above, but with custom paper size.
Width
Height
Size of the destination pages (e.g. 2x3): this represents the number of sheets you will get after having cut each printed sheet.
Width
Height

Resize input pages If set, input pages will be resized before being imposed.
Same as above, but with custom paper size.
Width
Height
Scale
Repeat input file Set this to act as if your file was repeated several times. It might be useful with some layouts, or useless with others…
Repeat
Last pages Number of pages to keep as last pages. Useful to keep the back cover as a back cover.
Last pages
Margins
Input margin
Output margin
Add marks?
Output format Output format can be set by defining the output format (the signature is then computed to fit this output format), or by setting the signature (output format is then computed).
Put as much source pages into the destination page of the given size (note that margins are ignored when computing this; if margins are set (see below), the resulting file might be larger than the required format).
Same as above, but with custom paper size.
Width
Height
Size of the destination pages (e.g. 2x3): this represents the number of sheets you will get after having cut each printed sheet.
Width
Height

Resize input pages If set, input pages will be resized before being imposed.
Same as above, but with custom paper size.
Width
Height
Scale
Repeat input file Set this to act as if your file was repeated several times. It might be useful with some layouts, or useless with others…
Repeat
Binding edge
Bind
Last pages Number of pages to keep as last pages. Useful to keep the back cover as a back cover.
Last pages
Group paper sheets If set, repeat the cutting-folding instructions above for every group of sheets. You get several sections, that you have to bind together to get a proper book.
Sheets
Margins
Input margin
Output margin
Add marks?
Output format Output format can be set by defining the output format (the signature is then computed to fit this output format), or by setting the signature (output format is then computed).
Put as much source pages into the destination page of the given size (note that margins are ignored when computing this; if margins are set (see below), the resulting file might be larger than the required format).
Same as above, but with custom paper size.
Width
Height
Size of the destination pages (e.g. 2x3): this represents the number of sheets you will get after having cut each printed sheet.
Width
Height

Resize input pages If set, input pages will be resized before being imposed.
Same as above, but with custom paper size.
Width
Height
Scale
Repeat input file Set this to act as if your file was repeated several times. It might be useful with some layouts, or useless with others…
Repeat
Binding edge
Bind
Last pages Number of pages to keep as last pages. Useful to keep the back cover as a back cover.
Last pages
Group paper sheets If set, repeat the cutting-folding instructions above for every group of the given number of sheets. You get several sections, that you have to bind together to get a proper book.
Sheets
Margins
Input margin
Output margin
Add marks?

Step 4: Go!

Step 5: Print, fold, bind…

FAQ

The data we store are:
  • the PDF files you upload (in RAM only; see next question);
  • anonymous daily statistics (such as today, XXX files have been processed using layout XXX, totalizing XXX Mb..
That's all. Nothing more.

We do use cookies, but not to track you. The cookies are only used to remember your prefered language, if set by choosing it in the top menu.

  • Short answer: Do not upload here anything you would not want to be public.
  • Long answer: Nobody will look to the files you upload. However:
    • technically, I (the author and maintainer of this website) have access to everything you upload (but I won't bother reading it);
    • although I did my best, there might be security issues, and your files might be publicly accessible without my knowledge;
    • malicious hackers might try and gain access to the server.
    If you are not happy with it, you can use this software locally (see next question).

You can either:
  • install this webserver locally and run it from your computer;
  • locally install the underlying tools (pdfimpose and pdfautonup). However, as far as I know, no one bothered to build a graphical user interface to them, so you will need to know a bit of command line to use them.
Both solutions require a bit of technical knowledge…

You can either open an issue on Framagit or send me an email: contact(at)pdfimpose(dot)it.

French-speaking users can contact us at the very same address: contact(at)pdfimpose(dot)it. Other languages? Sorry…

  • Short answer: NO!
  • Long answer: I suck at designing easy-to-use applications. I spent ages coding this website, and I would spend hours to implement a tiny improvement. So I probably won't do it. However, if you can do it, I will be happy to merge your pull-request.

I wholly agree. But if I were to make them, I would spend hours for deplorable results. But I will be happy to include your videos!

About

This website is a free software, distributed under the GNU Affero General Public licence, version 3 or any later version. You can download the code powering it at Framagit to review it, study it, change it, download it, run it…

This website is built on top of pdfimpose and pdfautonup, which can be used offline.

Contact: contact(at)pdfimpose(dot)it.