Printing Letter to Tabloid Booklet
I spent too much time today investigating ways to convert four pages of a PDF on letter-sized paper (8.5″x11″) to a PDF with two pages of tabloid-sized paper (11″x17″). The goal is to print the tabloid pages duplex and fold the sheet in the middle to make a booklet. After several unsuccessful Google Web searches, I switched to Google Groups. Groups contained a highly enlightening post that informed readers the printing term for laying out multiple smaller pages on one larger page is called imposition.
Searching for “osx imposition software” was quite fruitful. I eventually tried the demo of BookLightning by metaobject, which sells for $49. I drag-n-dropped my 4 page PDF onto the applications and it immediately produced a new PDF with my desired layout. If I hadn’t caught a snippet of instructions on metaobject’s Web site, I’d have found the application as confusing as others have on VersionTracker. The application gets two-thumbs up from me, but I’m still pondering if the orientation of the second page at 180 degrees from the first will cause headaches on the duplex printers I use.
