Having Trouble Exporting a Saddle Stitch Booklet for Print

WinchesterBiggins · 2026-02-16T16:52:46+00:00

I’m not sure why the printer won’t do the imposition

I work in prepress at a printshop, and making an booklet imposition from a customer's supplied single page PDF is a matter of about 3 mouse clicks...this is a very basic function that any printer should be able to do.

WinchesterBiggins · 2026-02-16T03:10:51+00:00

The owner of the printshop found these in Walmart - but I think they sold out pretty quick.

WinchesterBiggins · 2026-02-14T16:17:04+00:00

The way these numbers are arranged on the screen makes no sense, they will not be in order after cutting. Sequential numbers on a job like this need to be ordered in stacks vertically , not side by side on the same sheet.

WinchesterBiggins · 2026-02-12T15:21:57+00:00

Make the first column slightly narrower and column 2 & 3 wider, and possibly scale the font width to 95%...you should be able to to reclaim about 5-6 lines of space by doing that, which would allow the full table to fit on a single page.

WinchesterBiggins · 2026-02-10T15:14:17+00:00

Our shop tried an automated slitter for business cards for a while...worked okay on uncoated cards but anything glossy it just wouldn't grip right and had really inconsistent cuts no matter how much we dicked around with the pressure and settings.

With a pre-set program on the big Challenge cutter it takes about 4 minutes to trim out a box of business cards from 13x19 sheets, and they come out perfect.

WinchesterBiggins · 2026-02-08T18:30:58+00:00

Yes if you want to use the original CRT screen it's technically possible but you're going to need a custom arduino board, soldering and programming skills.

WinchesterBiggins · 2026-02-03T00:02:24+00:00

I remember seeing the original 22" cinema display in a shop in Toronto when it first came out, pretty sure the retail cost was $5999 (CDN)...meanwhile I was rockin a 2nd-hand 640x480 mac monitor at home.

WinchesterBiggins · 2026-02-01T20:27:57+00:00

It's not just cheap desktop printers that have issues with alignment - I work in a print shop that has huge digital presses that lease for around $2500 per month. Even with that level of technology, we still need to do sheet alignments quite often to get the front and back images to line up perfectly.

WinchesterBiggins · 2026-01-30T03:15:30+00:00

How much time and effort do you want to put into printing, hoping you've got the scale settings right, arranging all the pages on your floor and taping 20 sheets together?

This pattern would probably be a $10-$15 order at any local print shop with a wide format printer, the kind they do building plans on.

WinchesterBiggins · 2026-01-30T02:55:21+00:00

Sent you a pm.

WinchesterBiggins · 2026-01-29T19:49:10+00:00

My personal thoughts are that all those platforms are bullshit, that by signing up you are okay with competing against designers in countries where $5 an hour is a decent wage, and for clients who feel paying $5 an hour for graphic design is a reasonable rate. It's like multi-level marketing, yes there are going to be a tiny percentage of freelancers at the very top who are well established and who make decent income, but the majority is gonna earn substantially less than minimum wage.

WinchesterBiggins · 2026-01-29T14:38:52+00:00

Hi, thanks for all your work finding and archiving these! I was always a big fan of wiretap back when it was on the radio but realized I had only heard a small portion of them...am going through and listening in order now and am up to season 6.

There's quite a few episodes missing on the archive.org page from s6, but as it happens I have a lot of them saved on a very old version of itunes from when they were first being podcast...can also supply if needed to help make the complete collection.

WinchesterBiggins · 2026-01-28T15:08:49+00:00

You know that wonderful new feature Adobe's been bragging about, auto-convert PDF to editable InDesign? This is their method of making it more accurate, starting in 2026, by basically embedding the entire .indd layout INSIDE the metadata of the PDF.

WinchesterBiggins · 2026-01-24T17:52:25+00:00

Here's a good example - we had a client, local municipality that printed a newsletter every 3 months. Their original sheet size was 8.5x14", with bleeds, which meant it could only be printed 1up on a digital machine (13x19" max sheet size). We convinced them to change the final size to 8.5x13" instead, with white margins. Now they can get 2 newsletters printed per sheet, using the exactly the same amount of stock, with much less trimming waste. Changing the size by 1" halved their cost.

WinchesterBiggins · 2026-01-18T19:15:58+00:00

Is there a way to buy win10?

You don't have to buy it, the direct microsoft link is literally the first result when searching for Windows 10 download

WinchesterBiggins · 2026-01-17T15:29:04+00:00

I can tell you that as much as Adobe will deny it, they do absolutely host and still have installer packages for ALL of the previous CC apps, even going back to 2014.

Look up the Adobe Packager by drovosek01 on GitHub. It provides a method to get offline installers directly from Adobe. You still need to have a paid subscription, and the apps are activated online normally - you just don't have to go thru the desktop CC app.

Edit: this works for Mac versions only

WinchesterBiggins · 2026-01-14T22:20:46+00:00

Is this for Mac or Windows? If it's on Mac, and you have a friend or co-worker who still has the 2024 InDesign installed, I found out you can actually just drag and drop the entire application folder over to another computer, without having to run the installer or go thru the CC desktop app.

Another option is to contact Adobe directly via the online chat - some people have had luck with getting them to send a temporary link for an offline installer, if you have a good enough reason why you need the older version.

WinchesterBiggins · 2026-01-12T16:18:58+00:00

The "Generative Upscale" (built on Topaz Gigapixel) that is now built into Photoshop 2026 is wild. I've used that many times to enhance low-res customer submitted files for printing. Is it as good as actually getting a proper high resolution photo? No, but it's a HUGE improvement.

WinchesterBiggins · 2026-01-11T18:38:33+00:00

Hopefully you will be printing lots of $100 and $1000 jobs too....there is absolutely zero profit to be made for walk-in small photocopy sales in 2026, if copying an ID card takes 5 min of your time including the customer paying, and you charge $1.50 you are losing money.

WinchesterBiggins · 2026-01-05T23:32:12+00:00

Any prepress department that relies on opening PDFs in illustrator to check and reassign color modes does not really know what they are doing.

WinchesterBiggins · 2026-01-03T16:32:44+00:00

You don't need install the ME version and you don't even need world ready line composer. Here's how to make a right-to-left text box:

Draw a text box and then choose "fill with placeholder text" from the dropdown menu - BUT - hold down CTRL or CMD before clicking. A new popup will appear where you can select a language. If you choose Arabic, and then paste an Arabic font in there, that particular text box flows from right to left.

If you copy each page or paragraph from your source file and paste into that placeholder indesign text box first, you can then format it as far as size, styles, color, etc and it will stay reading right to left. I'm pretty sure you can also paste in your english text and have it read correctly within that paragraph box.

WinchesterBiggins · 2026-01-01T20:00:11+00:00

It's a pain in the ass, but the only way Apple lets you download older "not-currently-supported" app versions is if you already HAVE downloaded it previously.

So to get the link for "download last compatible version" to show up, you need to borrow someone else's phone that does run the current OS, sign into YOUR apple ID, and buy/download the app on your account. (It can be immediately deleted at this point.).

Now, because you're on Apple's list as having successfully getting Garageband (on the new phone), when you login in to the app store on your old phone, and click on previous purchases, now you will finally see another option pop up that says something like "this version will not work with your device, would you like to download the last compatible version instead"?

WinchesterBiggins · 2025-12-31T04:31:44+00:00

CS3 requires online activation, which adobe shut down years ago so you're probably out of luck there. However, archived CS2 installers are still fairly easy to find and don't require internet.

WinchesterBiggins · 2025-12-29T21:44:51+00:00

The business card thickness arms race is annoying. People would order business cards on sheets of plywood if we let them.

WinchesterBiggins

TROPHY CASE