3.10. F10 IMPOSITION OUTSIDE THE IMPOSITION GRID panel

3.10. F10 IMPOSITION OUTSIDE THE IMPOSITION GRID panel

In this panel, it is possible to perform imposition for single-sided or double-sided printing, omitting the cell grid. This means that independent pages can be placed in free areas of the sheet and jobs of any size can be imposed on a single sheet.

PDF pages can be placed on blank sheets – in this case, it is recommended to disable the drawing of cut markers and other elements characteristic of a regular cell grid. Alternatively, pages can be added to free areas of imposition sheets already filled with an imposition grid and the F1 IMPOSITION FILES panel.

Pages placed on a sheet may have a common bleed size for all and cut marks of equal length – independent of the value set in the CUT MARKS subpanel (F8 panel), where only the thickness and color of the markers are specified.

Placing pages on a one-sided sheet

Pages intended for imposition are placed in the Table of pages and sizes, similarly to the F1 IMPOSITION FILES panel. After they are loaded, the value in the Sheet column is 0, which means that the page has not yet been placed on any sheet.

After selecting the row with the selected page, you can place it on the sheet by clicking the left mouse button while holding down the SHIFT key. The F10 IMPOSITION OUTSIDE THE IMPOSITION GRID panel must be active. The value in the Sheet column is then changed to the number of the current sheet.

The left mouse click determines the location of the selected page node (sixth column of the page table, default: Top Left).

In simplified preview mode, the actual image of the PDF page is displayed with a yellow text frame superimposed on it containing information about the page size, row number in the page table, selected node, X and Y coordinates, and rotation angle. In addition, a blue dot is drawn to indicate the selected node [1].

The yellow frame is not visible in real preview mode.

Blank pages, i.e. rows in the Table of pages and sizes without a file name, are displayed as frames with diagonals. They are only visible in simplified preview mode.

Enabling the Attract to coordinate grid nodes [1] option enables the display of dots spaced at the value specified by the Coordinate grid pitch [2] in the preview. All X and Y values in the table are rounded to multiples of this value. Placing pages with the mouse will also be corrected by pulling the page node to the nearest coordinate grid point.

The buttons with arrow icons [3] move the pages selected in the table in the selected direction by a distance equal to the value of the Coordinate grid pitch, regardless of whether the snap to nodes option is enabled.

When the CTRL key is pressed, the movement is three times this value.

Placing pages on a two-sided sheet

Switching the sheet type from one-sided to two-sided changes the way pages are arranged on the sheet.

In the Table of Pages and Sizes, the Sheet column is set to 0 (zero) for all items. In simplified preview mode, even rows in the pages table are marked with a background color corresponding to recto.

Only pages from odd rows can be placed on the recto side of the sheets using the mouse. Pages from even rows on the verso side are filled in automatically. In even rows, the sheet number and page sizes are overwritten with values from odd rows, and the rotation and selected node (symmetrical) result from calculations for two-sided printing.

All changes described in even rows occur automatically after each change in the table.

An important element of this menu is the dialog box Change parameters in selected rows. It allows you to modify selected parameters in all selected rows simultaneously, which allows you, for example, to align the top edges of pages by setting a common Y coordinate value at the same nodes.

To select multiple rows at once, click while holding down the CTRL or SHIFT key, or drag the mouse cursor over the selected rows.

The Change parameters in selected rows window displays the parameters of the last selected file. The cell with the name of this file is highlighted with a blue frame.

The table allows you to copy and paste rows using the clipboard and keyboard shortcuts. However, please note that pasting a row into another location in the table will result in the pages from both rows being superimposed on each other, as all parameters remain identical.

The Table of pages and sizes in the F10 IMPOSITION OUTSIDE THE IMPOSITION GRID panel is saved in the template, excluding data from the File and Path columns.

For incomplete two-sided sheets, a case where the page on the recto side overlaps part of the verso side is also indicated. This area is marked in red.

Required experience

Using the F10 IMPOSITION OUTSIDE THE IMPOSITION GRID panel requires some experience in imposition, primarily due to the risk of preparing a layout from which it will not be possible to cut the jobs correctly after printing.

It is worth remembering that a printing guillotine is not a pair of scissors – it only cuts from the edge of the paper to the edge. Therefore, it is not possible to cut out works with a layout such as the one shown in the figure.

A useful aid in assessing the correctness of imposition and the number of cuts required is to draw extended cut markers – from edge to edge of the paper. Red lines indicate the left and top edges, and blue lines indicate the right and bottom edges.

The set of templates provided with the program includes a sample template named 2xA4_2xA5_3xDL.impa, which combines two A4 flyers, two A5 flyers, and three DL flyers on a single sheet.