Imagemagick Imposition

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Revision as of 21:13, 24 October 2006 by Mhanski (talk | contribs)
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This article is part of the Scripts series.

Below is a bash script depending on ImageMagick 6.2.x which makes simple imposition of PNG files exported from Scribus.

Version: IMpos 1.0 11.10.2006 Copyright: Mikołaj Machowski 2006 ( mikmach AT wp DOT pl )

Usage: impos -o format [options]

Where options are:

 -c	 - color of background (default: white)
 -d	 - directory for outut (default: imposout)
 -h	 - this help
 -m	 - multiply first image to fill empty sheets
 -o	 - format of transformation, arguments are
          2up	     - 2-Up
          4ss	     - 4-Up Saddle-Stitching
          4tumble   - 4-Up Work-and-Tumble
          4turn     - 4-Up Work-and-Turn
          8tumble   - 8-Up Work-and-Tumble
          8tur      - 8-Up Work-and-Turn

More info about imposition on: http://www.prepress.pps.com/TechReports/imposetr.html

WARNING: it takes order of pages the same as ls is returning. But Scribus is creating filenames in natural order like:

   filename-page1.png, filename-page2.png .. filename-page10.png

You obviously see where is danger: listing will be in "computer" order – like: 1, 10, 11, 12, ..., 2, 21, etc. To avoid problems you should fill numbers with 0 (01, 02, 03, etc.). IMO it would be good thing if Scribus would do that by itself, it would help in all situations where proper order of listing is important.

This is simple imposition targeted toward simply home jobs to fit in A4/A3 printer, without crop/fold/register marks. If someone would be interested in getting those features I will expand it. Note: bleed space will be never supported due to nature of image export from Scribus  :)