I have a job that that has a bunch of sequentially numbered postcards (100x150mm). In a typical run there are around 2000 cards done. I set for a digital press that uses SRA3 size card (450x320) so would like to set them up to print 8 per sheet as 4 rows, 2 columns with the sheet in portrait orientation. Because they’re sequentially numbered on the front i’d like to set it up such that when the run is trimmed on the guillotine, all I need to do is stack each pile in order on top of one another to get the entire set in sequence.

So, for my example the (say) top left slot sheet 1 will have page 1, sheet 2 page 2, sheet 3, page 3 etc all the way down to sheet (2000 / 8 =) 250.  In the next slot of sheet 1 (say, the top right ) the numbering then starts at 251 down through the sheets to 500, and so on through all the page slots to eventually accommodate all 2000 cards, 8 to view on 250 sheets. When they’re trimmed I only need to stack each trimmed stack on top of one another to keep them all in sequence.

Reading a few of the questions on this board makes me think it’s also the same problem as several users have described in printing perfect bound books with multiple pages per sheet.

I can’t see any obvious way of doing this. Can it be done?

Hi Michael,

I don’t see a way to achieve that either.

This is funny - I just was going to ask the exact same question as Michael, as I have (really!) the exact same use-case and requirements as he has (except for the total number of numbered pages I need to impose in the way he describes).

So, if it can’t be done right now with PDFClerk (like it looks like it is the case), a new imposition mode (or algorithm) that achieves a “vertical” ordering through a stack with automatic calculation of the number of pages needed depending in the number of source PDF pages would be highly appreciated. The requirements have been laid out by Michael already in an excellent, concise and clear manner.

Can you imagine this getting ever built into PDFClerk in a future version?

An additional idea that just sprang to my mind (and which may serve as a workaround in the short time) is a command that would re-order the source(!) pages in the PDF in some one-time operation after importing it, so that one could then use one of the existing, simple impositions with a signature size of one sheet. I haven’t checked if this could be done via AppleScript already (implementing the re-ordering algorithm of pages in some custom AppleScript for exactly this use case and have it control PDFClerk to re-order the source pages). Do you see a way we could achieve this maybe over this route?

Any ideas welcome, as it would save me at least one hour of manually sorting my custom concert tickets per event after cutting them…

Regards, Christian

A cut and stack option is something I want to implement. I can’t, at the moment, give any projection as to when such a feature would become available and in what form.

I could not find any work-around through page-reordering in PDFClerk Pro to get this done.