pdfcpu

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A PDF processor written in Go.

View the Project on GitHub pdfcpu/pdfcpu


Changelog

Booklet

is a useful variation of the N-up command.


Usage

pdfcpu booklet [-p(ages) selectedPages] -- [description] outFile n inFile|imageFiles...


Flags

name description required
p(ages) selected pages no


Common Flags

name description values
v(erbose) turn on logging  
vv verbose logging  
q(uiet) quiet mode  
u(nit) display unit po(ints),in(ches),cm,mm
c(onf) config dir $path, disable
upw user password  
opw owner password  


Arguments

name description required values
description configuration string no  
outFile PDF output file yes  
n the N-up value yes 2, 4, 6, 8
inFile PDF input file inFile or imageFile(s)  
imageFile… one or more images inFile or imageFile(s)  


There are many styles of booklet you can choose from, depending on the page size and orientation of your booklet or zine, the sheet size of the paper you will be printing on, and the method you will be using for assembling.

N-up Value

The n-up value will be how many pages of your booklet will fit on one side of the sheet you will be printing on. The following options are available:

n-up portrait landscape multifolio
2 1x2, long-edge only 2x1, long-edge only yes
4 2x2 2x2 no
6 2x3, long-edge only no
8 2x4, long-edge only no

n=2

This is the simplest case and the most common for those printing at home. Two of your pages fit on one side of a sheet (eg statement on letter, A5 on A4). Assemble by printing on both sides (odd pages on the front and even pages on the back), folding down the middle, and binding the booklet with staples, sewing, etc.

n=4

Four of your pages fit on one side of a sheet (eg statement on ledger, A5 on A3, A6 on A4). When printing 4-up, your booklet can be bound either along the long-edge (for portrait this is the left side of the paper, for landscape the top) or the short-edge (for portrait this is the top of the paper, for landscape the left side). Using a different binding will change the ordering of the pages on the sheet. You can set long or short-edge with the binding option.

In 4-up printing, the sets of pages on the bottom of the sheet are rotated so that the cut side of the paper is on the bottom of the booklet for every page (for the default portrait, long-edge binding case. Similar rotation logic applies for the other three orientations). Having the cut edge always on bottom makes for more uniform pages within the book and less work in trimming.

To assemble booklets with the default 4-up binding method (btype=booklet):

Advanced 4-up

The btype=advanced is a special method for assembling, only for 4-up booklets. Printers that are used to collating first and then cutting may prefer this method. To assemble:

n=6

Six of your pages fit on one side of a sheet. This produces an unusual sized booklet, but can be an efficient use of paper. To assemble:

Only available for portrait, long-edge orientation.

n=8

Eight of your pages fit on one side of a sheet (eg A6 on A3).

Pages are arranged similar to 4-up with btype=booklet (but without the rotation). To assemble:

Only available for portrait, long-edge orientation.

Perfect binding

Perfect binding is a special type of booklet. The main difference is that the binding is glued into the book’s spine, meaning that all pages are cut from the sheet and not folded as in the other forms of booklet. This results in a different page ordering on the sheet than the other methods. If you intend to perfect bind your booklet, use btype:perfectbound. To assemble:

Multifolio or Signatures

Multifolio or signatures, is a technique used to produce longer booklets. This technique makes the most sense when your book has at least 128 pages. For example, you can bind your paper in eight sheet folios (also known as signatures), with each folio containing 32 pages of your book. For such a multi folio booklet set multifolio:on and play around with foliosize which defaults to 8.

The multifolio option is only supported for n=2.

Description

A configuration string to specify the details of the booklet layout.

parameter values default
dimensions (width, height) in user units eg. ‘400 200’ 595 842
formsize, paper size paper size to be used. Append L or P to enforce landscape/portrait mode A4
btype The method for arranging pages into a booklet. (booklet, bookletadvanced, perfectbound) booklet
binding The edge of the paper which has the binding. (long, short) long
multifolio on/off true/false, for n=2 and PDF input only off
foliosize for multi folio booklets only 8
guides on/off true/false off
border on/off true/false off
margin float >= 0 0
backgroundcolor, bgcol color none


Default description

'formsize:A4, dimensions:595 842, guides:off, border:off, margin:0'

Examples

2-up booklet

Let’s make a booklet where two of your pages fit on one side of a sheet of paper. We’ll be using A4 so the format of the booklet pages will be A5. This command generates a PDF file representing a sequence of page pairs (front and back side of a sheet of paper). Once generated we need to print the file two-sided and then assemble our booklet by stacking the printed sheets and folding them down the middle:

$ pdfcpu booklet -- "p:A4, border:on" booklet.pdf 2 pageSequence.pdf

Here is the front and back side of the first printed sheet of paper for an input file with eight pages.
This also explains that four booklet pages fit on one sheet of paper:


You can also set margins, the sheet background color and you can even render the guidelines for folding:

$ pdfcpu booklet -- "formsize:A4, border:off, guide:on, margin:10, bgcol:#beded9" booklet.pdf 2 pageSequence.pdf


Since A4 happens to be the default form size the following command is identical to the one above:

$ pdfcpu booklet -- "g:on, ma:10, bgcol:#beded9" booklet.pdf 2 pageSequence.pdf


4-up booklet

Now let’s make a little zine also using A4 but now four zine pages shall fit on one sheet of A4 which results in a zine page size of A6.

The assembly stage looks a little bit different here since we will also need to do some cutting. After pdfcpu has generated the PDF which holds our zine first we need to print it using two-sided printing. Then we take the printed stack and cut the sheets horizontally. After cutting, we place the bottom set of pages after the top set of pages in the zine. Then fold the half sheets:

$ pdfcpu booklet -- "p:A4, border:on" zine.pdf 4 pageSequence.pdf

Here are the first two pages representing the front and back side of the first paper sheet:


Using guidelines for cutting and folding and a nice combination of margin and background color the assembly steps may be easier to understand:

$ pdfcpu booklet -- "p:A4, bo:off, g:on, ma:10, bgcol:#beded9" zine.pdf 4 pageSequence.pdf


Booklet from image files

Similar to nup and grid the booklet command also accepts a sequence of image files instead of a PDF input file. In this case pdfcpu applies the same logic as above treating each image as a booklet page:

$ pdfcpu booklet -- "p:A4, g:on, ma:25, bgcol:#beded9" bookletFromImages.pdf 4 *.png

In the following example we have five input image files resulting in a booklet with five pages of content.
Since we want to produce a 4-up booklet we can fit eight booklet pages on one sheet of paper.
As a result of this pages 6 thru 8 are rendered as empty pages.
Here are all pages (1 and 2) of the output file bookletFromImages.pdf:


Booklet with folios/signatures

$ pdfcpu booklet -- "p:A4, multifolio:on, foliosize:8" hardbackbook.pdf 2 in.pdf