: Two-sided printing: exact positioning? I have designed some fancy cards (80mm x 48mm), and I would like to print them on both sides of a sheet of paper now (5x2 per A4 sheet). Naturally,

@Shelton719

Go to your print dialogue box hit setup then preferences
Then go to the layout tab click image shift and then set your offset for one side
Trial and error the settings until you get a close match.


As others have said it'll never be perfect but I'm getting it to within 2mm with this method

Hope this works for someone!

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@Chiappetta793

I've been working on this issue for quite a while.
You can 'almost' exactly align both sides if you

0.
create crop marks on your PDF and

1.
test print both sides (I flip pages manually because my printer doesn't have automatic duplex option).

2.
get a ruler and measure the differences


Nudge the exact distances (of an odd or even page)


4.
Save and print.

*For the Nudge part I use 'adobe acrobat pro', which has a layer tool
that lets you import pages while nudging exact calculated amounts.

I've been searching for an automated solution for this and I came upon this post. If there's a better solution for this please let me know.

Happy Duplex Printing

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@Miguel516

Fix the printable area and document area same as Manual Duplex Printing.

I think it can solve your problem.

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@Shakeerah625

I found the solution. Apparently my PDF program had an option "auto-center" to remove imposed printer margins. When I turn that off, the positions are moved quite a bit away from what they should be, but at least now they respond consistently to moving the images around on the paper. It's now printing with the 2mm margin correctly (with a fluctuation within 2mm, that is). Nevertheless, thanks all for the input! :-)

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@Kaufman565

Since you say you can make the distortion pretty consistent in the same direction, you can lay the cards out on the page like this (A = front, B = back, one sided):

_________
| A | B |
| A | B |
| A | B |
| A | B |
| A | B |


...then, after printing one, flip the paper horizontally and put the same sheet(s) through again, printing the same file. It's the same orientation lengthways, so the lengthways distortion should be the same, and since it's flipped horizontally the As will be on the back of the Bs.

If the distortion is the other way, lay out so the divide is the other way, then flip the other way.



Another thing to do is check that nothing like "Scale to fit media" or "Shrink oversized pages" or anything like that is ticked in your print settings.

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@Kevin459

@Scott is correct, however I understand the need for this, so instead of redesigning, I'd recommend printing on two sheets and then mounting them onto each other. Provided you take care and use the right materials this can be seamless.

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@Murray976

Can't be done on a home printer. Paper shifts and moves as the printer pulls it through itself. You could print 1000 copies and never get one where both sides line up perfectly.

The best solution is to design something which does not require both sides to line up.

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