PagePlus

Printing basics

Printing your publication to a desktop printer is one of the more likely operations you’ll be performing in PagePlus. The easy-to-use Print dialog presents the most commonly used options to you, with a navigable “live” Preview window to check your print output.

The dialog also supports additional printing options via the More Options button including Double-sided Printing, Mail Merge, Rasterize, and many other useful printing options. One particular option, called Layout, allows for print-time imposition of your publication—simply create a booklet or other folder publication at the print stage.

Here we’ll cover what you need to know for basic desktop printer output. If you’re working with a service bureau or professional printer and need to provide PDF output, see Exporting PDF files and Generating professional output.

To set up your printer or begin printing:

1. Click  Print on the Standard toolbar. The Print dialog appears.
   – or -
   Choose Print… from the File menu, or after right-clicking on the page or pasteboard.

2. Select a currently installed printer from the Printer drop-down list. If necessary, click the Properties button to set up the printer for the correct page size, etc.

3. Select a printer profile from the Profile drop-down list. You can just use Current Settings or choose a previously saved custom profile (.ppr) based on a combination of dialog settings; Browse… lets you navigate to any .ppr file on your computer. To save current settings, click the Save As… button, and provide a unique profile name. The profile is added to the drop-down list.
   Note: If you modify a profile settings, an asterisk appears next to the profile name.

4. Select the number of copies to print, and optionally instruct the printer to Collate them.

5. Select the print Range to be printed, e.g. the Entire Publication, Current Page, or range of pages. For specific pages or a range of pages, enter “1,3,5″ or “2-5″, or enter any combination of the two.

   To print selected text or objects, make you selection first, then choose Current Selection appearing in the Range drop-down list after selection.

   Whichever option you’ve chosen, the Include drop-down list lets you export all sheets in the range, or just odd or even sheets, with the option of printing in Reverse order.

6. Set a percentage Scale which will enlarge or shrink your print output (both page and contents). A 100% scale factor creates a full size print output. Alternatively, from the adjacent drop-down list, choose Shrink to Fit to reduce your publication’s page size to the printer sheet size or Scale to Fit to enlarge or reduce the publication page size as required.

4. Keep Auto Rotate checked if you want your publication page to automatically rotate your printer’s currently set sheet orientation. When you access the Print dialog, if page and sheet sizes do not match, you’ll be prompted to adjust your printer sheet orientation automatically (or you can just ignore auto-rotation).

5. Click Print.

• If Auto-fit print layout is checked in Tools>Options>Options>General, PagePlus will intelligently determine the best print orientation (Portrait or Landscape) for a particular job. This may mean that the setting shown in the Print dialog doesn’t match your publication’s layout. For example, if you’re printing business cards, PagePlus will pick whichever orientation maximizes the number of cards per sheet.

• Print options are reset each time PagePlus is restarted. Changes you make during a session are only “remembered” for the duration of the session unless you save a print profile.

• Depending on your printer driver, to print text with shading or custom settings, you may need to select the printer’s Properties… (Advanced tab) and set TrueType Font to be “Download as Softfont” under the “Graphic” section.

Using the preview window

The Preview window shows how your publication maps to the selected sheet size, and displays your actual page contents. Sheet navigation controls let you preview each page in turn. For imposition layouts, you can view bleed and page marks if set.   Instead, you might like to use Print Preview mode for more detailed preview control. The previewed document will show with a pinkish hue if page and printer page sizes do not match!

More print options

Additional print options are available fr
om the Print dialog if you’re planning to use imposition at print time, use specific PagePlus features which use printing (e.g., Mail Merge), print double-sided, or generate professional output.

Option name	Setting Descriptions
Print to File	Check Print to file to output to a single print file, print file per page, or file per separation instead of directly to the printer.
Layout	Page imposition is typically controlled during initial page setup. However, you can impose pages at print time by using various Layout options. Books, booklets, N-up, tiled, and thumbnail output can be created “on the fly”. Select an imposition option from the Layout style drop-down list. The imposition feature is used most frequently in Print Preview, due to the larger preview area and additional viewing controls. See Previewing the printed page for more information about imposition and a description of each option.
Mail Merge	The default setting, All records, results in printing one copy of each record. Select Ignore Mail Merge to print the publication without merging data (placeholder text appears instead). To print only selected records, select Records and type the number(s) of the record(s) to be printed. Hint: You can print multiple copies of a record by typing its number more than once. For example, type “1,1,1″ to print three copies of record 1. To identify record numbers, refer to the merge list or use preview mode as described above. See Using mail merge.
Bleed	Check Bleed to switch bleed on, then set a Bleed Limit. See Generating professional output.
Layers	Check Print all layers to print all layers whether they are visible or not (see Layer names and properties). Keep unchecked to exclude hidden layers.
Separations	See Generating professional output.
Page Marks	See Generating professional output.
Rasterize	See Generating professional output.
Picture Control	See Generating professional output.
Double-sided Printing	Single Sided: Keep enabled if you’re using a desktop printer capable of single-sided printing only, i.e. simplex printers. Automatic Duplex, flip short side: For double-sided printing to a duplex printer, where pages flip by their shortest side. This updates your current printer settings automatically. Automatic Duplex, flip long side: As for flip short side above but pages flip by their longest side. Useful for printing portrait publications. Manual Duplex: For double-sided printing to a simplex printer. This option is grayed out unless you’ve configured Manual Duplex printing as described below. Double-sided printing will only be available for publications that have at least two pages.
Manual Duplex	Printing to duplex printers can give your greetings cards and other documents the edge. It can also save money by allowing you to use less paper. However, not all printers have this built-in duplexing function and are considered simplex (supporting single-sided printing only). Using the Manual Duplex Printer Setup wizard, you can overcome this limitation of simplex printers by flipping pages in the printer’s paper tray when prompted—your publication prints double-sided! To setup, the wizard asks you printer-related questions. You’ll need to: Consider how you offer paper to your printer. Print a test page, check which side printed, then reinsert the page as instructed. To print, you need to select a Manual Duplex double-sided option. There may be times that you want to use manual duplex printing, even if your printer has in-built support for automatic duplexing. A good example for this would be when using a straight path paper feed when printing a greetings card on special media that is too thick for the normal paper tray. Double-sided printing to duplex printers is unaffected by PagePlus’s manual duplex printing. To set up your printer for manual duplex printing: Select and configure the printer that you wish to use. Click Set up Manual Duplex... Follow the Wizard instructions and select the options that apply to your printout and follow instructions (and insert test pages) where prompted. Click Next when you are ready to proceed through the setup. Click Finish. To adjust the printer setup without running the wizard again, use the equivalent options in the Settings section. To print (using manual duplex): Click Print. The first page should print. Place the paper back in the tray as instructed, then press continue to print the other side. You should now have a double-sided printout! Click Turn off Manual Duplex to disable the feature for the current printer.

Preparing color publications

PagePlus includes a host of features for preparing and printing high-quality color publications. Here’s a quick summary, with cross-references to other Help topics…

• Unlimited color mixing. You can create virtually any color using the HSL or RGB color models, and specify custom CMYK colors. See Managing publication colors and palettes.

• Color management. You can select International Color Consortium (ICC) profiles that specify how the internal RGB and/or CMYK colors in your publication’s fills and bitmaps will map to on-screen and printed colors. See Managing screen and output colors.

• Industry standard PANTONE® Colors. Choose from the Process Color System or Solid Color System palettes, with automatic conversion of PANTONE® solid colors into Process colors if required. See Color matching with PANTONE® or Serif colors.

• Apply colors and shades, gradient and bitmap fills, and transparency to pictures, text, and graphic objects. See Applying solid colors, Working with gradient and bitmap fills, and Transparency-related print options.

• “Colorize” pictures. This allows you to change full-color images to a single color or shade. You can adjust the intensity of the original colors to generate a low-intensity version for use as a background image. See Applying solid colors.

• Color Mapper for vector images. The Color Mapper allows all imported vector images, and vector-based OLE objects, to have their included colors replaced by existing palette colors (or standard PANTONE colors). The Color Mapper can also extract any required image color(s) to the publication’s color palette. See Format menu.

• Photo Optimizer for printer calibration. For printing photographs, the Photo Optimizer lets you print test samples and choose the best settings, which are then applied when the publication is printed. See Optimizing pictures for printing.

Printing basics