Cut & Stack imposition

Cut & Stack breaks the reading order on purpose. Instead of running 1, 2, 3, 4 across the face of the sheet, it runs the sequence down through the pile, so that when the printed stack is guillotined into its positions and those piles are put one on top of the next, the result is in order from the first piece to the last with no collation by hand.

It is the only one of the four modes whose output looks wrong on screen and right in the finished work. Sheet 1 will not carry pages 1 to 4. It carries the first page of each pile.

The arithmetic

Three numbers decide everything: the total number of pages, the number of positions on the sheet (rows × columns), and the depth of the pile, which is total pages ÷ positions. Call them N, P and D. Each position gets a contiguous block of D pages, and the page that lands in position j on sheet k is (j − 1) × D + k.

That single expression is the whole mode. Everything else — sheet size, gaps, marks, duplex — behaves exactly as it does in the other modes.

A worked example: 24 pages, 4-up, 6 deep

Twenty-four numbered vouchers, imposed 2 × 2 so P = 4. The pile is D = 24 ÷ 4 = 6 sheets deep. Position 1 will carry vouchers 1 to 6, position 2 carries 7 to 12, position 3 carries 13 to 18 and position 4 carries 19 to 24.

Reading that back sheet by sheet, using (j − 1) × 6 + k:

Guillotine the printed pile once vertically and once horizontally and you have four piles. The position-1 pile reads 1 to 6 from the top. The position-2 pile reads 7 to 12. Drop pile 2 under pile 1, pile 3 under that, pile 4 last, and the whole 24 are in order — one stacking operation instead of twenty-four collations.

When the page count does not divide evenly

The arithmetic assumes N divides by P. When it does not, the last sheet has positions with nothing to carry, and the pile depth is no longer uniform across the positions. The pragmatic answer in the pressroom has always been the same: round the run up to a multiple of the positions and overprint, or pad the source document to the multiple before importing. Twenty-four vouchers 4-up is clean; twenty-two is 4-up with two blank positions and a stacking step you have to think about rather than do mechanically.

When to use it, and when not to

• Numbered tickets, raffle books, vouchers and sequential forms, where the order is the product.
• Any long run where hand collation would cost more than the printing.
• Not for reading copies or proofs — use N-Up, which keeps the sequence on the face of the sheet where a reader expects it.
• Not for a single repeated artwork — that is Step and Repeat.
• Not for folded work. A folded section is not cut into positions, so the stacking logic does not apply; use Booklet.

What it is for

• Numbered tickets and raffle books
• Sequential forms and vouchers
• Any many-up job that must stay in order after cutting
• Long runs where collating by hand is not an option

Settings