I have a pdf document, and I want to print it as a booklet, i.e. two pages of the document on each side of a sheet of paper and so that (when printed) the entire thing can just be folded in the middle to create a small booklet.
How can I do this easily?
For a free and universal alternative you can use the pdfbook script, part of the pdfjam collection which is usually included in LaTeX distributions (notably MacTeX). It's simple to use from the command line:
pdfbook mypdf.pdf
If the above doesn't work, then /Library/TeX/texbin isn't in your PATH (or /usr/texbin for older versions of MacTeX). The best course of action is to ensure PATH is correctly set (lots of command line programs will fail if the PATH variable isn't correct and pdfbook is one of them); this isn't trivial under OS X if you want a consistent behavior between applications launched from the dock and applications run from a terminal so you definitely should search a complete solution to this specific problem. As dirty work-around, you can run export PATH="$PATH:/Library/TeX/texbin:/usr/texbin" every time before you use pdfbook (including in the service below).
If you don't want to use the command line, you can create a service easily.
pdfbook, for instance pdfbook "$@".My complete script also creates a temporary file and opens the resulting PDF:
TMPF=`mktemp -t bookletXXXX`
mv "$TMPF" "$TMPF.pdf"
pdfbook -o "$TMPF.pdf" "$@"
open "$TMPF.pdf"
The most obvious problem is the several GB download and installation of a LaTeX distribution if all you want is the pdfbook script.
pdfbook is there so it definitely looks like a PATH problem. Sadly, you can't just use the full path of the script (which is /usr/texbin/pdfbook) because then it will fail to find its parent script pdfjam. I've updated my answer with an explanation of the problem and a dirty work-around, but you definitely should fix the PATH problem globally instead (I don't remember how I did it and couldn't find the SO question I used back then but it's there somewhere).
brew cask install mactex This includes a tool called pdfbook2 which seems to do the same as pdfbook in this answer (possibly with different arguments though). As above, you need to start a new shell to update your PATH variable.
pdfbook has indeed been superseded by pdfbook2. Also, it’s neat that you can now use homebrew, back when I wrote the answer they would redirect you to the MacTeX website. @Rob, can you edit the answer with the correct paths and such? I no longer have access to a Mac to test it properly.
You can use the Create Booklet utility1 which adds an option to “print”, from Preview or any other app, to generate a second pdf file with the pages arranged appropriately to print and bind as a booklet. When printing the resulting pdf booklet, remember to select “Two-Sided: Short-Edge binding” in the “Layout” options of the print dialog.
1. No longer free, $9.99 on the App Store as of 09/2015.
My solution is to install Macintosh version of Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, available from https://get.adobe.com/reader/, and use it to open the PDF file. When printing from Adobe Reader, there is several options in page sizing and handling :
Choose Booklet and you're good to go.
See https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/print-booklets-acrobat-reader.html for more detail. The advantage of this solution that the same solution also works in the Windows world.
"Booklet printing" is called imposition in the terminology of the professional printing business.
is a utility for doing exactly what you want. It costs US $35, and has a free trial with some features disabled. It is affordable for casual use, but also good enough for professional imposition.
Open the PDF in preview, go to the print dialog and you'll find some (hopefully) helpful settings — I say hopefully as I've not done exactly what you're after...
Click the little down arrow next to the printer name to expand the print dialog if its not already larger. In the bottom half of the dialog window, there's a drop-down menu where you can select a few relevant options:
Now I've not done it myself, and I don't know if it'll work for folding the pages in the middle (it looks like its intended for binding the pages along one edge) but that's probably the place to start looking.
If it doesn't work as is, then you may need to manually rearrange the pages (which you can do in Preview) to be in the right order so that simple double sided printing with short-edge binding puts the pages in the right places, though this may be quite difficult if there's a lot of pages...
Good luck...
You can use the free python script here. Just add it to your PDF Services folder in your user Library (create the folder if it doesn't exist). It will then appear in the PDF button of your print menu.
It's set for A3 sheets, but there are options to change the sheet size (and other things) in the script.
There is a nice App in the AppStore called booklet for about $ 1.00: https://itunes.apple.com/ch/app/booklet/id1375737884?l=en&mt=12 It has a couple of options and does exactly what you want.
This capability has been added to the native preview app within macOS Catalina - no need to download anything else.
In the print dialog, click "Show Details" (if you haven't already), then change the selector from "Preview" to "Layout". You should now see a setting for "Two-Sided" and you can select "Booklet". I also like to select a thin border to see that proper printed pages. Although the preview window doesn't actually show what will print, it does seem to print properly.
There is a free online tool, no downloads required, called The Zine Arranger that can help make all sizes of zines/booklets and you can even create customize sizes. This includes a half-size booklet (2 pages per side, fold the page in half).
https://nashhigh.itch.io/zinearranger
I have tried it out myself using a PDF of pages I had and it worked like a charm!
I also like that it requires only a browser and files; no need to touch code, the Terminal or Automator.
Other things I tried that DID NOT WORK and you SHOULD AVOID:
Folks who also had this problem:
