Impose pages for folding, with the order checked
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Draw, type or upload a signature and place it on the page a reader sees, at a width you can state in inches, on one page or every page. Transparent, so it does not hide the line you are signing on.
Split a PDF by page, by batch, or by range
Rearrange a PDF by drag, keystroke, preset or typed order
You want to print a 24 page guide as a folded, stapled booklet.
Input
guide.pdf (24 pages) · saddle stitch · 6 sheets a signature
Output
12 sheet sides: [24,1], [2,23], [22,3], [4,21] ... which folded and nested read 1 to 24
The imposition is read BACK the way a folded booklet is read, nesting the sheets and following them, and the page says whether that gives 1, 2, 3 in order: a check of the arithmetic rather than a claim about it. The padding is to a multiple of four, because a folded sheet carries four pages, so a four page document is one sheet rather than the four half-empty sides the previous version produced. The sheet is built for the largest page in the document, and a page that is landscape by rotation is imposed as a landscape page.
Lay a PDF out for printing as a folded booklet. The pages are imposed two up in saddle-stitch order, so that once printed double sided, folded and stapled they read 1, 2, 3 in sequence. The whole imposition is shown before anything runs, sheet by sheet with thumbnails, and the tool reads it back the way a folded booklet is read to check that the order really does come out right. Choose sheets twice as wide (nothing scaled, needs Tabloid or A3) or the same paper as your original (two pages scaled onto one landscape sheet). Long documents are split into signatures, because a single fold of more than about eight sheets will not close.
Turn an eight or sixteen page document into folded sheets that staple into a booklet.
Choose the same paper: an A4 document becomes an A5 booklet printed on A4, using half the paper.
Long documents are split into signatures that fold flat and are bound in order, which is how a real book is made.
Check a layout as it will really be read, with the pages in the positions the fold puts them.
Six sheets, twelve sides, in the order [24,1], [2,23], [22,3], [4,21] and so on. Folded and nested they read 1 to 24, which the page checks and says.
One sheet, two sides: [4,1] and [2,3]. The previous version produced four sheet sides of one page each, which is twice the paper.
Letter, A4, landscape and A5 give a sheet built for the largest page, with each of the others centred in its half at its own size rather than blown up to fill it.
Saddle stitch is what a stapled booklet is: sheets folded in half and nested inside each other. So the outermost sheet carries the first and last pages, the next carries the second and second to last, and so on inwards. For n slots, sheet k carries pages n-2k and 2k+1 on its front and 2k+2 and n-2k-1 on its back.
That arithmetic was already right here, and saying so matters because it located the three things that were not.
**A sheet carries four pages, so the padding is to a multiple of FOUR.** The previous version padded to a multiple of the whole signature, so a four page document with a two sheet signature was padded to eight and came out as four half-empty sheet sides where two full ones are the answer: twice the paper, for nothing.
**The sheet is built for the largest page.** The previous version used page one's size for every sheet, so a document mixing Letter, A4, landscape and A5 produced four identical Letter-doubled sheets and squeezed three of its four pages. Here the sheet fits the largest page and the smaller ones are centred in their half at their own size: nothing is enlarged, because enlarging a page changes the size it prints at.
**A page that a reader sees sideways is imposed sideways.** pdf-lib's page embedder hands back the raw page and discards its /Rotate entry, so a landscape page declared by rotation was imposed as the portrait page the file holds rather than the landscape page the reader sees. Each page is now drawn turned by its own rotation, and the check is that the half of the sheet holding a page is the same picture, the same size and the same ink as that page rendered on its own.
The tool reads its own imposition back. It nests the sheets, reads them in the order a folded booklet is read, and shows you whether that gives 1, 2, 3 in order. That is a check of the arithmetic rather than a claim about it, and it is on the page before you press anything.
Two sheet sizes are offered because two situations are. Twice as wide scales nothing and needs paper twice the width: Tabloid for a Letter document, A3 for A4. The same paper puts two scaled pages on a landscape sheet the size of your original, which is how an A4 document becomes an A5 booklet on the A4 paper you already have.
Double sided, flipping on the SHORT edge, with any "fit to page" or "scale to fit" setting turned off. Long edge flipping puts every second side upside down and is the most common way a booklet comes out wrong.
With the default sizing, paper twice the width of your pages: Tabloid for a Letter document, A3 for A4. Choose "the same paper" instead and two pages are scaled onto one landscape sheet of your original size, so an A4 document prints as an A5 booklet on A4.
Blanks are added at the end to reach one, and the tool says how many and why. A folded sheet carries four pages, so a six page document takes two sheets with two blank slots.
A group of sheets folded together. A single fold of more than about eight sheets will not close flat and its inner pages stick out and have to be trimmed. Splitting a long document into signatures and binding them in order is how a book is made, and the tool imposes each one separately.
The tool reads its own imposition back the way a folded booklet is read, nesting the sheets and following them, and shows whether that gives 1, 2, 3 in order. That line is on the page before you produce anything.
It is imposed the way you see it. A page that is landscape because it carries a rotation is placed as a landscape page, not as the portrait page the file stores.
PDF parsing and editing happen in your browser. Documents, and everything inside them, are never uploaded or stored remotely.