: InDesign Spread Pagination I have created an 8 page brochure with InDesign and exported a PDF for my print guy. At the moment the pages are exported as: 1, 2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8 But for print

@Voss6371140

Alan is correct. Print your booklet as a postscript file with bleeds and printer marks and you're golden. Maybe it's become common place for the printer to paginate, but any good designer should know these skills. 1 - to design for print, and 2 - because you should know how the print process works.

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@LarsenBagley460

The discussion and info in other answers on where and by who this should be done in the design > prepress > print workflow is great, but it bugs me a little that the original simple practical question doesn't have an answer.

So, let's assume there's some good reason to need to change a 1, 2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8 page order to 8-1, 2-7, 3-6, 4-5 in InDesign, before sending off the PDF. How?

It's really easy:


In the arrow menu off the top right of the Pages window, make sure "Allow document pages to shuffle" is unticked. "Allow document pages to shuffle" is Adobe-speak for something like "Force document pages into default pattern". (see also)
From here it's just dragging and dropping the pages into place
It's a good idea to make sure that the centrefold is in the appropriate place for each spread. If and how centrefold location information actually gets used will vary on setup (I'm not sure of all the technical details here - please do edit or comment with any important details).




Don't forget to export the PDF as Spreads, not Pages (assuming again, of course, that there's a good reason to do all this your end!).

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@Sarah814

An inexpensive solution for making spreads can be bought as a script for as little as 30 dollars here: www.impositionsoftware.com/
This software script works fine for what I'm doing.

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@Sims5801359

I just had a request from a client to paginate the PDF so they could print the booklet on their Xerox in-house (2UP A3, 10pp = 20 page booket).

Alan's response was very helpful. I added a couple of extra steps in order to generate the PDF... I did the following:

File -> Print Booklet
Select Postscript File
Open .ps file in Adobe Acrobat Professional, which opened Distiller, converted to PDF.
Save file

Job Done! No need for third party scripts.

Cheers

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@BetL875

When you're in an unusual situation like this (and Scott's answer is dead on -- it's a very rare case that you need this in professional work), the straightforward solution is to use File > Print Bookletand select PDF Printer for the output. It will produce printer spreads.

There's a problem with this workflow on the Mac since Apple broke the Adobe PDF engine in Snow Leopard, but you can still get there by exporting to PDF and using the Booklet printing option in the Acrobat print dialog.

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@Vandalay110

When I have to do something really basic here (which I very rarely do i.e. almost never), I will create the PDF as spreads, and then pass the resultant pdf through an open source utility called pdfbkit. As far as pre-press features it provides, I have little knowledge of the program aside form the fact that it will take a 5.5h x 8.5w pdf in reader's spreads and impose it as printer spreads which I can then duplex on my laser printer, stack, fold staple,..., PROFIT

It is command line software, no gui interface. type pdfbklt without options and you will get a help screen. (my sample: pdfbklt.exe -b ltr -l -p 2 %1 ) where %1 is a path&filename

pdfbklt is here (half-way down the page): www.sil.org/~hosken/utils/pdfcreate.html

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@Speyer780

At the design shop where I worked for ten years, we had a design department, a type department (either pouring copy into comps which were designed using dummy text or updating cyclical documents which didn't need redesigning every quarter), and a pre-press department.

When a document was approved and ready to be sent to the printer, the pre-press department would save a copy of the file which was specifically meant for that process. They would do the trapping, purchase stock photos, create trim marks (for folders and business cards and such), create separate pages for fifth plates, and repaginate into printer's spreads. In your case, they'd use Sections and Numbering to give each page its own section
start (and thereby make the numbering stick). Then they'd
drag the pages around in InDesign to get the printer's spreads as you
described above.

Unless my print provider was doing my pre-press work for me, I would never assume they would do the printer's spreads. I would assume that was my responsibility, to ask them how they wanted the PDF set up and then give them a finished file. Obviously this is an instance of Your Mileage May Vary, since Scott has the complete opposite experience. :)

It's really not a huge trauma to rearrange pages for him. The fewer moving parts the printer has to deal with, the fewer chances for him to make a mistake.

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@Caterina889

Honestly, this is the print provider's job. There's no reason a designer should be doing pagination for press. That being said, I realize that some print providers are lazy or at times, honestly don't know how to paginate native files, or aren't using a PDF workflow yet (unbelievably) and don't know how to paginate a PDF. There are software packages specifically for prepress to paginate/trap/etc various file formats. In my experience, no quality print provider will ever ask for a file paginated in a specific manner.

Most commonly PDFs should be exported as single page PDFs (not spreads) so the printer can paginate however they need to.

The easiest way to repaginate, without altering your original INDD file, or purchasing imposition plugins/software, is to export as single page PDF. Create a new Indesign document, and import the single PDF pages and paginate to the printer spreads. Then export as PDF in spreads.

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