This is a short video on how I take a PDF file and print it to sections that I can bind.
I've got an old arts and crafts catalog, that I've got the PDF off the Internet.
And I'd like to bind it in a very functional binding.
It's not going to be anything fancy.
Before we get into the process in detail, maybe I should explain some of the terminology.
A section - or a gathering - or sometimes called a signature, especially in America, is a collection of sheets
of paper that are folded.
So it's very common for sections to have 4 sheets.
So I've just taken 4 sheets of paper, folded them.
Now I'm going through numbering the pages.
So a 4-sheet section has 16 pages.
So 1 to 16.
Now, if we unfold the sections, we see that the first sheet of paper has pages 1 and 16 on one side, And
pages 2 and 15 on the other side.
And we can go through all the sheets of paper and we can see what pages they have printed on them.
The process of arranging the pages like this is called imposition.
To be very clear, this is a sheet of paper.
When it's folded, it becomes a folio.
Pages 1 and 2 is a leaf.
And each side of the leaf is a page.
A 4-sheet section has 8 leaves and 16 pages.
What I'm looking at today are sections that are printed at home on a home printer.
However, you may be lucky enough to get sections from a small press, that's been commercially printed.
Now, they'll normally come folded, but they can come as sheets, in which case you have to know the order in which to
fold them, and they'll look like this.
So this was a set text from a book binding competition that - because of my YouTube commitments - I didn't have time to
bind. But I will use it for a project later in the year.
So let's get back to our arts and crafts catalog.
It has 68 pages.
So I have some options.
I could do 5, 16-page sections, which comes to 80 pages, so I'd have to pad this file out the extra
pages to make up 80.
Or I could do 6, 12-page sections.
So that's 3 sheets per section, which is 72 pages.
So that would be an additional 4 pages.
And that's actually perfect, because I can add a blank leaf at the front and back of the file.
So a leaf is 2 pages.
And they'll look like endpages on the book.
So I'm just going to add two pages at the beginning and end of the file.
Now I'm using Acrobat Pro to do this.
Now, I don't think the free version of Acrobat allows you to add pages, and you might have to use a program like Word
to do that. Once I've formatted the file the way I want, I'm going to use a little program called Booklet Creator.
So I'll drag the file into booklet creator.
I'll adjust the parameters like the page, the paper size, so I'll use A4.
It'll get folded. So it'll be an A5 size book.
And then I adjust to 12 pages per section.
It calls it booklet.
So I find the folder to save it in, and I hit the "create booklet" button, and it creates
the imposition file.
So I can now print this out and all the pages will be in the correct order.
So it's important when printing it out to correct print, to the correct paper size.
So it's A4 paper and that the layout, or the binding edge, is set to short edge.
If you did long edge, the reverse side of the pages would be upside down.
Obviously, you do need a printer that can do double-sided printing.
Now, before I paid for Acrobat Professional and Booklet Creator, this is how I used to do it.
So I'd open the file in Finder.
That's because I use a Mac.
Now, you'd use the equivalent on a Windows box.
And then I would print it, but instead of sending it to the printer, I would send it to a PDF file, and I would select
the pages for a section.
So pages 1 to 12 would be a three sheet section.
Send it to a PDF file and call it section one.
And then I do that six times to get my six sections.
So now I would do from pages 13 to 24 for section two.
Now, I continue to do that for all the other sections until I've reached the end of the book.
Now I have six files, one for each section of the book.
Now I open up each of those individually with the free Acrobat PDF Reader.
Now it's just a matter of printing out each of those files as a booklet.
So you hit print, hit the booklet button.
You can check the paper size, though, the printer should be smart enough to detect to detect the paper size.
But I often check it anyway, especially if you've got a printer that prints A3 paper as well.
And then it's just a matter of hitting print.
After visiting the printer, you'll have a pile of paper that now has to be folded in the correct order.
So we were doing 3-sheet sections, so we count off three sheets.
And the first check is that the page numbers are sequential on the inside.
So that's correct. Knock up to the head and fold the section.
Now we count out the next 3 sheets, check that the center pages are sequential, which is correct.
And you can also check that the first page is the next page after the last page of the previous section.
So they are the two checks I always do.
And when you reach the end, hopefully there's three sheets of paper.
If not, you've miscounted somewhere.
Now it's just a matter of punching the holes, sewing the book and making the cover.
Now I'm going to follow Peter Verheyen's instructions for doing a German stiffened paper binding, or a
steifbroschuren. And this is the subject of this week's actual video, which will come out on Saturday
morning - Saturday morning, my time.
So there's an example of the binding that I'll do.
I'll do five variations of it based on the variations in Peter's website.
And they're a very nice, practical, binding.
I hope you've enjoyed this short video.
As always, if you have, please hit the big thumbs up button.
If you want to be notified of my future videos, please hit the subscribe button.
And until next time, cheerio.