Updated 1 April 2007

To use Booklet CE, first open the document that you would like to make the booklet out of. The number of pages in the document must be a multiple of 4. Pad with blank pages if necessary. (For Perfect Bound, the number of pages in the document must be a multiple of 4 times the size of a signature in sheets.)

Once the document is open, double-click on the Booklet CE 3.x script in the Scripts palette. This will bring up the Booklet CE dialog. Choose the settings that you need. You may wish to experiment with a small test document before doing "real work" with Booklet CE, to be sure of getting the settings that you want. Booklet CE remembers your last settings, so that you don't have to enter them each time. If you want to reset your settings back to the original settings, use the checkbox at the bottom of the dialog.

The result of running the script on your document is a new untitled document, organized in 2-page printer spreads, with the original pages reordered according to the specified binding. For example, in an 8-page saddle stitched booklet ordering, the first resulting spread will consist of page 8 and page 1.

Imposition Type

Booklet CE 3 currently supports 3 imposition types: 2-up saddle stitch, 2-up consecutive, and 2-up perfect bound. There are probably online resources explaining each, but I couldn't find any good site that is not associated with a particular product.

Output Spread Order

Booklet CE 3 supports 3 front/back output orders: Fronts and Backs of each sheet, interleaved, All Fronts followed by all Backs, and All Fronts, followed by all Backs in reverse order. Choose the one that best fits your printing workflow.

Saddle Stitch Outer and Inner Creep

Since saddle stitch documents are folder in the middle, and paper has a thickness, outer sheet contents are not aligned exactly with inner sheet contents. To compensate, we can create slightly wider spreads on outer sheets and slightly narrower spreads on inner sheets. This is done in increments -- outer and inner creep are the starting and ending spacing between the original pages. Typically the outer creep value is positive and the inner creep value is zero or negative. A positive creep puts space between the original pages. (The space may be filled with bleed areas from the original pages.) A negative creep cuts off a bit of the area of the original pages near the binding side.

If creep values are nonzero, note that the spread widths will be different on each sheet. A positive creep will reduce the left and right margins (see below), and a negative creep will increase the left and right margins.

Creep is applied on a per-signature basis to Perfect Bound impositions. Creep is ignored for Consecutive impositions.

Perfect Bound Imposition Values

In perfect bound imposition, the output sheets are divided into one-or-more-sheet signatures. Each signature is folded together, as if it were a mini-saddle-stitch booklet, and then all of these little booklets are put together and cut along the binding edge.

So Sheets Per Signature gives the number of sheets in each signature. (A 'sheet' consists of a Front and matching Back spread.) Generally you'll also have to specify a Gap value between the two pages of each spread, to allow for cutting. Specifying a Gap value will reduce your left and right margins.

The Gap value is ignored for saddle stitch imposition.

Space at Edge of Sheet (Margins)

Here you can specify your four margin values. If you do not need any Creep or Gap, and do not need any Printer Marks, your margins can all be zero. Otherwise you will need some margin space to accommodate your printer marks and/or creep and/or gap.

For example, if you are doing printer marks but not creep or gap, you will need at least Crop Mark Length plus Crop Mark Outset margins on all 4 sides. If you are doing gap, add gap/2 to the left and right margins. If you are doing creep, add Outer Creep / 2 to your left and right margins.

Printer Marks

This section should be mostly pretty self-explanatory. "Out Length" means the length of the Registration Mark cross hair stroke that is perpendicular to the nearest page edge. "Along Length" means the length of the stroke that is parallel to the nearest page edge. (Note that we don't want the terms "horizontal" and "vertical" here, since, if the strokes are not the same length, you would get the wrong thing on either the left and right or top and bottom edges.)

The Page Information text might seem to be a little too closer to the sheet edge than necessary; this is to allow for wrapping to two lines of text, in case of really long filenames.

Reset All Settings To Their Original Values

If you check this box and then hit the "OK" button, all dialog settings will reset to their default values and the dialog will be re-displayed.