Magazine Printing Procedure

It's not so hard, honest. Once you've done it a couple of times it won't seem so convoluted. Just follow the procedure carefully. If you hit trouble post a comment and I'll try to sort you out.

While there are lots of programs that will allow you to view and print PDFs it's clearly not practical for us to deal with all of them, so we're just going to stick with Adobe Reader (http://get.adobe.com/reader/otherversions/). Since it can be a pain in the neck getting print settings wrong you can grab a minimal eight page (i.e. four sides of A4) print test file to use to practise with before risking more paper and ink on the real thing. Why four sides? You'll see why as we go along. (N.B. There are some special notes that HP inkjet users should read now).

1. Download and save printtest.pdf, and open it in Adobe Reader (don't try to do this from within your web browser).
2. Select File->Print Setup Click to zoom
   1. Select the printer
   2. Confirm that the paper size is A4
   3. Set the Orientation to Landscape
   4. Click OK
3. Select File->Print Click to zoom
   1. Verify the printer selection
   2. Set Page Scaling to None
   3. Disable Auto-Rotate and Center
   4. Important Verify that the document and paper sizes match — if they don't then check your print settings again.

      If your printer does double-sided (aka duplex) printing click on the Properties button and make sure that your double-sided printing options will flip the paper on the Short Edge (remember, the orientation of the document is Landscape). Then click OK and you're done.

      If your printer only does single-sided printing...

   5. Set Subset to 'Odd pages only'
   6. Click OK, and let pages 1 and 3 print.
4. When these pages have printed place them back in the printer ready to print the other side. For printers that feed and eject their paper from the front (like my HP printer) you just need to replace the paper back down into the feed tray without turning it round or over. For printers that have the feed at the back (like my Epson) just lift the paper up and place it straight down into the feeder so that the trailing edge of the pages that you just printed is now the leading edge (i.e. it's at the bottom of the feeder tray). This is why we're using a practice document first! In either case just be careful that the long edge that corresponds to the top of the booklet pages is always on the same side.
5. Select File->Print again, but this time...
   1. Set Subset to 'Even pages only'.
   2. Depending on how your printer feed works set Reverse pages. On my HP this is necessary — on the Epson it isn't (that's why the test file prints four sides!). Remember what you did at this stage.
   3. Click OK, and let pages 2 and 4 (or 4 and 2) print.