n-up is shorthand for 2-up, 3-up etc., that is, combining more than one different page together on the same sheet. Quite Imposing takes care of the details of combining pages, once you have answered some questions about what you want. It reads the current document, but does not change it, and creates a new document with the pages arranged onto sheets.

It's worth knowing what the n-Up Pages feature can do for you:

• You can scale pages down to make more of them fit on a sheet.
• You can make each sheet have a fixed layout, like 3 across and 2 down, or just ask to fit as many pages as possible.
• You pick a maximum size for each sheet. You can ask for a tall or wide page layout, or choose "best fit", which chooses tall or wide to get the most pages onto each sheet.
• You can have unused space removed around the edge of each sheet, so that the combined document contains neatly arranged pages with no wasted space.
• You can add margins (also known as "gutters") between each page, and around the edge of each sheet.
• You can add frames (lines around the edge of each page), and crop marks (special marks outside the page which allow the pages to be trimmed after printing).
• You can use Tile pages before n-up if required. Any bleeds previously defined in the document are honoured, as described in About bleeds .

Choosing options for n-up Pages

You will select options on three dialogs, then click the Finish button. The options won't be described in detail, since they just reflect the features already described.

You use the Next button to step through each screen of information, and you can also use the Back button to change settings on earlier screens.

You will notice that on the first screen you can choose whether or not you want pages to be scaled. In most imposition tasks you will want to place every page at 100%.

The choices on the final screen will change depending on whether you chose scaling. Notice in particular the effect of choosing a particular layout like 3 x 2.

• With scaling off, the rows and columns you quote are a maximum. If that number of rows or columns will not fit, fewer will be used.
• With scaling on, the pages are reduced or enlarged to try and fit exactly that layout.

Choosing alignment

Provided you select Sheets will not be trimmed on the first screen, there will be an Align button on the third screen. In Quite Imposing 1.x, alignment was always top left. The most common alternative will be to centre pages, but any side or corner can also be chosen.

There is also an option Align all sheets independently . This makes no difference if all sheets are equally full. But if some sheets have fewer pages, the normal behaviour is to align them all to match each other, so incomplete sheets line up. If this option is selected, each sheet is handled separately, so that if, for instance, you choose centring and the final sheet has 1 page only, it will be centred.

N-Up & Step and repeat: more alignment choices (6.0)

A new choice is available in 6.0 under the Alignment options (click Align on dialog 3). The option is “align row by row”.

The effect of this option is to look at each row of pages as it is placed on the sheet, and align it according to the horizontal alignment (left, right or centre). Normally, the pages are considered as part of a sheet or as part of the entire document.

This may be especially useful when a layout includes a partial row, and the requirement is to have the pages on front and back of the sheet line up. It would often be used with aligning the rows in the centre.  Otherwise, it is the entire page of sheets which is aligned in the centre, and the short row will align to the left of the other pages.

There are now a lot of choices and it can be hard to visualize the effect. So the Align dialog now shows a guide to the effect of your options. This is NOT a preview of actual pages, but designed to show the effect of your settings with different types of page layout (for example, full rows or short rows; all pages the same or pages different sizes).

A key concept is the alignment box. This is the area that is aligned according to your “Align where” settings. It is shown by a dotted line in the pictures. The pictures show two sheets (four sheets if front and back are mirrored). The first sheet shows pages all the same size, and the second sheet shows different mixed sizes.

The sheet independence and row by row options are important, but if each sheet is filled with pages of the same size they will have no effect at all. You only need to consider these options if the pages are not completely filled, or you have a mixture of different sizes.

Here is an example of just one case – bottom right alignment – with the different settings for align each sheet independently and align row by row).

• Align row by row controls whether
• The alignment box is aligned, but the rows are left aligned in the alignment box (NO)
• The alignment box is aligned, and each row is also horizontally aligned (YES)
• Align each sheet independently controls whether
• the alignment box is the same on each sheet (NO) or
• The alignment box is as small as possible on each sheet (YES).

In these pictures, the orange boxes are the pages on the white box (sheet). The alignment is bottom right, but you can see there is a small margin, the same on each example.

Remember this is just an example of one alignment value, and page layout not mirrored. You can use the alignment dialog to see the effects of all the different values.

Selecting margins and spacing

You have three choices for margins and spacing in n-up processing: none at all, simple, and advanced.

Simple margins and spacing will satisfy many needs. You can specify a margin, to appear all round the sheet, and a spacing, to appear between each row and column on the sheet.

Advanced margins take longer to set up, but give more flexibility. Click the Advanced margins and spacing check box if required, then click the Setup button.

You can now select a value for each of the four margins: top, left, bottom and right (remembering that, if you do not automatically trim pages, the right and bottom margins may be larger, but will never be smaller).

You can also select values for spacing (or "gutter"), both horizontal and vertical. These allow you to put a single value or a list. In either case, the value(s) are repeated as often as needed. The list of values must be separated by spaces only.

Example of advanced spacing

Take a look at this example, which has an exaggerated scale. To achieve this arrangement you would use the following, assuming the current units from General Preferences are mm.

Top margin 20
Left margin 20
Bottom margin 20
Right margin 20

Horizontal spacing: 0 40
Vertical spacing: 10

Notice how the horizontal spacing list starts to be repeated to give 0, 40, 0.

N-up and Step & Repeat: Mirrored flow (5.0)

Note: this function is not designed for use after the Shuffle Pages feature, as the layouts will not be correct in this case. It may be possible for you to create different Shuffle rules for this case.

The N-up function takes a document and lays it out on a larger sheet in rows and columns. Before 5.0 it always laid out in order of sheets, filling each row, then the sheet, before moving to the next sheet. This means the front of a printed sheet is always finished before the back of the sheet is started. In 5.0 there is a new Flow control on the third N-Up dialog.

If this value is set to Normal it will work the same as previous releases, filling each sheet (or side of the sheet) in turn.

If you choose the option Double (Front-back-front-back) then the pages will be placed alternately on the front (odd numbed sheet) and back (even numbered sheet). In addition, the page placed on the back will be in the left-right mirror position – so pages are laid out right to left, rather than left to right. This means that when the sheets are printed double sided, the back will be in the correct position. (Note that only the page positions are numbered; the page contents are unchanged).

If you choose the option Double with back upside down the pages are positioned so that, if the back of each sheet is turned upside down, it will be the correct position so the front and back of each page are aligned.