Help how do i fucking print the dam pages, i know how to do everything ellse. But im fucking crying trying to get my pc to print the pages in to signatures!
Hi anon!
This of course is going to be dependent on what size book you are trying to make. I'm going to write these instructions as if you are trying to print out a book that is laid out for half-letter pages.
Getting the pages into the right order to print for a book is called "imposing". There are many ways that you can impose a pdf file, but this is the way that I've found to reliably work for me.
Decide how many pages each signature will have in it. The rule of thumb is that each signature should have about 4-5 sheets of paper in it, which works out to 16-20 "pages" of your layout. The size of your signatures will depend on how many pages your book is; try to pick the one that divides best for the number of pages you have. You might be left with a smaller or slightly larger signature at the end.
Take the PDF and split it into sections based on the size of your signatures. There are various free programs you can use to do this; googling "split pdf" should get you something that works. You're going to have lots of little PDFs. I recommend making sure that you save each split as a copy so that you have an original, whole PDF still
Open up each "piece" in Adobe Acrobat Reader. Click "Print". When the dialogue box pops up, look for the "page size and handling" section. Click the "booklet" tab, Adobe will automatically impose that section for you.
Before you click print, make sure that your printer is set to print on both sides of the paper and that you have checked "flip on short side"!!! This is very important!!
Print! See if it works! I recommend printing on some test paper before your real paper to make sure it's working properly so you don't waste your good paper.
Repeat for every signature.
Alternatively, the extremely helpful @simply-sithel has done an extraordinary amount of work to perfect this imposing program on github! It even works for weird tiny sizes!
I haven't used it yet so I don't have any guide or tutorial for you about it, but I am told it's very helpful!
Hopefully this is everything you needed.