If you want to print a little booklet on your own printer; something you can just fold over, and staple yourself, then you don't want InDesign's Print dialog box. Instead, you want to go to the File menu, and choose Print Booklet. When you use Print Booklet, you're doing something called imposition. Imposition is when you rearrange all your document pages to print out in a different order. For example, if you have an 8 page booklet, then you want page 1 and page 8 to print next to each other; not page 1 and 2. If you need to do really complex imposition, like for a printing press, you don't want to use Print Booklet; you want to use professional imposition software.
They usually work on PDF files, and impose them properly. But here we're just working on a small document, Print Booklet is perfect for. Most of these features are irrelevant for the kind of documents we're printing using Print Booklet; things like Creep, or Perfect Bound printing, and so on. We're just going to stick with Saddle Stitch. I'm going to jump right to my Preview pane, and I can see that this document is not going to work on this piece of paper. The white rectangle is the piece of paper, and my pink stuff is the part of my document that's hanging off the side.
So I need to change my print settings in order to make this work. To do that, I'll click the Print Settings button, and up comes the Print dialog box. A lot of stuff is grayed out here, so I don't have to worry about it. The main thing I need to do is go to the Setup pane, and change this to print sideways: Landscape, instead of Portrait. Now, when I click OK, you'll see that it fits on the page, but I see that there's still pink. That means this page, the document page, is too big to fit on this paper. So once again, I go to Print Settings dialog box, the Setup pane, and say Scale this to Fit.
It's going to scale it down to about 75%. Click OK, and now you can see that the document pages will fit on the paper. It's a little bit hard to see here, but you'll notice there is a little 1 on this page, and an 8 on this page. Those are the document page numbers. They don't really print; you're not going to have a big number in the middle of the page. It's just there to indicate that page 1 and 8 are going to be next to each other. I can then scroll through the document, and see that 7 and 2 are next to each other, and then 6 and 3, and finally, 4 and 5 are going to be the inside spread.
When you're ready to print, just click the Print button. But I do want to point out that there's a major limitation of print booklet, and that is, your document must have a number of pages that's divisible by 4. So 4 pages, or 8 pages, or 12, or 16; something like that. And if you fold a piece of paper in half, you can see why. There are only four panels that you can fill. So if you had a five page document, for example, InDesign wouldn't know where to put that fifth page. With that said, Print Booklet is really cool when you're making your own proof print, or printing up a small run of your own booklets.
Author
Released
5/7/2012- Getting started in just 30 minutes: the quick start guide to InDesign
- Understanding your workspace
- Creating and setting up new documents
- Creating and applying master pages
- Entering and editing text
- Placing graphics
- Working with color and gradients
- Editing frame and path shapes
- Working with layers, objects, and groups
- Rotating and scaling objects
- Applying character and paragraph formatting
- Using styles
- Creating and formatting tables
- Exporting to EPUB and interactive PDF
- Packaging, printing, and exporting your final document
Skill Level Beginner
Duration
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Q: Where can I learn more about graphic design?
A: Discover more on this topic by visiting graphic design on lynda.com.
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What is InDesign?1m 23s
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Introduction
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Welcome57s
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Using the exercise files1m 38s
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1. Learn InDesign in Thirty Minutes
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Getting started3m 33s
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Adding or editing text3m 23s
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Adding or replacing graphics4m 31s
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Moving objects around4m 55s
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Printing and creating a PDF4m 57s
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2. Understanding Your Workspace
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Working with panels3m 58s
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3. Creating a Document
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Creating new documents7m 39s
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4. Managing Pages
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Changing page size4m 38s
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Overriding master page items2m 43s
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Adding page numbering2m 22s
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5. Text
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Understanding text frames3m 38s
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Typing and editing text4m 48s
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Importing text3m 47s
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Threading text frames3m 12s
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Setting text frame columns4m 31s
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Putting text on a path5m 50s
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Using the Story Editor5m 10s
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Checking spelling5m 12s
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Using Find/Change4m 45s
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6. Graphics
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Importing graphics8m 20s
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Using the Links panel7m 17s
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7. Formatting Objects
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Selecting objects5m 2s
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Colorizing images1m 59s
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Adjusting transparency4m 4s
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Adding drop shadows3m 33s
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8. Color
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Creating color swatches4m 33s
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Creating gradient swatches3m 53s
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Applying gradients4m 22s
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9. Frames and Paths
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Creating text outlines4m 12s
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10. Managing Objects
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Stacking objects2m 5s
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Grouping and locking objects3m 10s
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Nesting objects3m 23s
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Understanding text wrap5m 51s
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Using anchored objects6m 13s
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11. Transforming Objects
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Duplicating objects5m 37s
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Rotating objects2m 22s
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Scaling objects4m 21s
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Skewing objects1m 8s
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Mirroring objects3m 50s
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12. Character Formatting
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Changing case3m 23s
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Using Find Font3m 54s
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13. Paragraph Formatting
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Using drop caps3m 26s
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Setting tabs7m 36s
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Adding automatic bullets4m 10s
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Numbering paragraphs6m 10s
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14. Styles
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Using character styles4m 45s
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Using object styles2m 47s
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15. Tables
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Creating a table4m 29s
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Adjusting rows and columns4m 36s
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Formatting a table4m 32s
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Formatting cells6m 2s
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Applying table styles5m 33s
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16. Long Documents
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17. Interactive Documents
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Exporting EPUBs6m 12s
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Creating an interactive PDF12m 49s
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Building a Flash SWF4m 7s
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18. Packaging, Printing, and Exporting
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Packaging for output3m 34s
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Using the Print dialog box4m 52s
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Printing a small booklet2m 46s
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Exporting a PDF7m 56s
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Exporting text3m 27s
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Conclusion
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Next steps1m 25s
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Video: Printing a small booklet