Fold-over Booklet creation.

[BlutoSigPi]

Last time I made a fold over booklet I did it in word and had to copy and paste pages in the right order and print them just so...very very time consuming. Does anyone have a way to create booklets in osX? I hear MS publisher does it but that's windows only...and that there's a plug in for indesign but I don't have indesign nor the money to pick up a copy. Any ideas on what software to use or how to do it?

 

[mdnky]

How do you plan on printing the item? If you're going to run more than a few off, it might be easier to make them fullsized as a standard document (in normal order), then take them (printed copy or digital file) to a place like Kinkos for the printing/booklet making. Their machines automatically order them so the only big downside is it'll mainly be BW on the inside, and there's not a huge amount of control with margins here. If the location has the Image Runner 600 or similar machines, everything can be done on it and the cost isn't bad at all.

 

[edX]

there is a way to do this with appleworks but i must admit i've never been able to quite get the hang of it. it involves setting up a chain of anchors and links between columns. the instructions in the help doc are not entirely clear. i managed to get the first 2 pages set up correctly but couldn't get any more. i have also seen a program or 2 at versiontracker that appear to be able to do this. look in their dtp section.

 

[BlutoSigPi]

Last time I printed the booklet I printed 20 pages on one side...then flipped the printed pages over and printed the next 20 pages on the other side. I worked it out by hand what pages need to be where and what needs to be printed so that I could create a booklet from there. It was quite a bit of work tho and I'm hoping to get away from that. It came out good this way except there was no way to number the pages to come out right. I'll check out VT and see what's there. Anyone else?

 

[Natobasso]

The easiest and cheapest way is for you to get Adobe Acrobat (maybe version 4.0 or 5 for more economy) and create pdf files from your word files (though OS X can do this when you "print".)

You can design your pages with the correct margins, make sure you don't encroach .25" inches to the edge of the page. No bleeds is cheaper. Then take all your pdfs to kinkos and make them a "dummy" which you can print out and create for them to follow. Then they can work out how to get b/w and color pages to work together to create a completed document.

 

[BlutoSigPi]

Sounds time consuming and expensive. I hate using kinko's but if I have to.. See there are graphics that need to be in a certain location in the booklet so they go with the descriptions...etc. It has to be right. I would rather just lay it out myself and do it. It would be so much eaiser if word just supported something like this.

 

[pds]

I think the problem with Word is that it tries to be able to do this, and then fails miserably. Word process in a word processor and design/layout in a design/layout program.

Indesign, Quark, - m$ publisher is one of these...

You could do it in photoshop (maybe in the gimp for free)... use one doc for the front, one for the back. (ok, so it's not simple, but what is? )

 

[Natobasso]

If you are attached to Word, for monetary or preference reasons, and you are using OS X, just design your pages and then make your document into a pdf (go to "print" and choose "print as pdf".) It's not too hard! Just design the pages the way you want them. The pdf process gives you the assurance that what you see is what you will get. Frankly, Word sucks major a** as a design program.

The problem arises if you show up to kinkos with a word file (or any other printer, for that matter) because printers hate word and word mistreats printers. Word cannot tell the printer what page it's printing or any data about the document. Images misprint, images get lost that you think are embedded and it's much more difficult to check where your images actually are. I have seen entire documents print entirely different in word once taken to a pro RIP-ing machine.

Hope this helps!