N-Up imposition

N-Up puts consecutive pages of your document across a grid on each sheet, in reading order: left to right, top to bottom, then on to the next sheet. Page 1 lands in the top-left position, page 2 beside it, and the sequence runs on until the grid is full. Nothing is reshuffled. That is the whole difference between this mode and Cut & Stack, which deliberately breaks the sequence so that a guillotined pile reads in order.

Because the order stays on the face of the sheet rather than running down through a pile, N-Up suits work that is read as separate sheets — proofs, handouts, presentation copies — or work that will be trimmed apart and kept loose.

How it works

You give the mode a sheet, a grid and a scale. The grid is rows and columns, both defaulting to 1, with a horizontal and a vertical gap between placed pages. FastImpose works out the footprint of one placed page at the scale you set, multiplies it out across the grid, adds the gaps, and lays the resulting block on the sheet. With Centre in sheet on, the block is centred and the leftover sheet is split evenly as margin on all four sides; turn it off and the block is pinned to the margin instead.

The arithmetic is worth doing on paper before you set anything, because it is the arithmetic that decides whether crop marks have anywhere to go. A mark is 5 mm long and sits 3 mm out from the trim, so every outside edge of the block needs at least 8 mm of clear sheet. A grid that fills the sheet edge to edge leaves the marks nowhere, and the usual fix is a couple of percent off the scale rather than a change of sheet.

If you would rather not solve the grid yourself, Automatic placement derives rows and columns from the sheet size and the page size. It is off by default, because most operators already know they want 2-up or 4-up and would rather state it than have it inferred.

A worked example: 24 A4 pages, 4-up on A3

Take a 24-page A4 document to be proofed 4-up on A3. A3 is 297 × 420 mm; four A4 pages at full size would need 420 × 594 mm, so the scale has to come down. At 65% an A4 page becomes 136.5 × 193.05 mm.

1. Two columns at 136.5 mm with a 1 mm Gap X: 136.5 × 2 + 1 = 274 mm wide.
2. Two rows at 193.05 mm with a 2 mm Gap Y: 193.05 × 2 + 2 = 388.1 mm tall.
3. On a 297 × 420 mm sheet that leaves 11.5 mm of margin left and right and just under 16 mm top and bottom — comfortably more than the 8 mm the crop marks need.
4. 24 pages ÷ 4 positions = 6 sheets single-sided, or 3 sheets duplexed.

Sheet 1 carries pages 1, 2, 3 and 4; sheet 2 carries 5 to 8; and so on to sheet 6, which carries 21 to 24. Duplexed, the front of sheet 1 carries 1 to 4 and its back carries 5 to 8, which is why the 180° back-flip matters even on a proof — without it the back of every sheet reads upside down when you turn it on the long edge.

Try 70% instead and the block becomes 295 × 418 mm. It fits the sheet, technically, and then you have roughly a millimetre of margin and no room at all for a mark. The scale that fits is not always the scale that prints.

When to use it, and when not to

Reach for N-Up when the finished pieces do not have to come off the guillotine in sequence. Proofs and reading copies are the obvious case: four pages to a sheet, six sheets instead of twenty-four, and the reader turns sheets rather than pages. Ganging small items that share a stock is the other: put the different artworks in one source PDF in the order you want them on the sheet, and N-Up will place them in exactly that order.

• Use Step and Repeat instead when every position on the sheet carries the same artwork.
• Use Cut & Stack instead when the trimmed pieces must remain in numerical order after cutting — tickets, vouchers, sequential forms.
• Use Booklet instead when the sheets are folded and stitched rather than trimmed apart.

What it is for

• Proofing a long document on fewer sheets
• 2-up and 4-up handouts and flyers
• Reducing click cost on a digital press
• Ganging small pages that share a stock

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