PDF signature booklet imposition
Impose continuous reading pages into foldable signatures with complete physical-sheet,side and source-page mappings.
- 1Add input
- 2Adjust settings
- 3Get your result
Tool input and files are processed in this browser without being uploaded.
Before you start
Choose signature size,left/right binding,A4/Letter landscape paper,margin and gutter. Each flat side is viewed upright from its printed side with top edges aligned. Pad the final signature to its full selected slot count with explicit blanks. Check duplex flip settings on your printer with a small sample; driver behavior is not inferred.
How to use this tool
- Choose the PDF and signature/binding settings.
- Review paired sides and padding; print one signature as a sample.
- Download complete booklet PDF and sheet JSON/CSV.
Supported inputs and limits
One30MiB PDF with at most500 pages; complete outputs80MiB. This500-page limit does not change other PDF tools.
Keep visible CropBox and quarterturn-rotated page vector/image artwork. Reject encryption/signatures,annotations/interactive forms,active actions/scripts,optional layers,page-level transparency Group,non1 UserUnit,bad page trees,edges>14,400pt or nonquarterturn rotations. Original metadata/bookmarks/forms are not preserved. This is not forensic removal; cropped-out source content may remain in the output.
4–64 pages per signature,in multiples of4; printable slot area must be positive. Uniformly scale and center each source page into its slot; no guessed spine thickness or creep.
Drawing instructions total80MiB including stream separators; plain/Flate/ASCII85/ASCIIHex/RunLength page-content streams only. Reject other instruction filters and predictor/unknown decode parameters. Encoded image resources are retained and shared without image transcoding.
Worked example
Example input
500 continuous source pages,16 slots per signature.
Example options
{"signature":16,"binding":"left","paper":"a4","margin":10,"gutter":4}Example output
32 signatures,128 physical sheets,256 printed sides,12 blank slots; folded reading order contains pages1–500 once.
When something does not work
Flatten unsupported interactive/layer/transparency structures in a full PDF editor and verify the source artwork. Correct settings and retry; failure/cancellation leaves no partial result.
Frequently asked questions
How is this different from ordinary2-up?
Signatures pair outer/inner leaves and front/back sides; continuous2-up places reading pages consecutively. The sheet-side convention does not guarantee the same flip option across printer drivers.