Elliot Wilen (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} ewilen) wrote,@ 2009-02-21 16:59:00 |
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Practical printing tip: two-up manual duplexing with Mac OS
Although iPod/iPhone Apps that let you transfer files from your computer and/or the Internet have finally made it practical for me to carry RPG documents around for casual reading, I still want to print them out from time to time. One blessing of being near-sighted is that I'm comfortable reading fairly small type — and this dovetails nicely with two of my other qualities, namely being a cheapskate and not wanting to waste natural resources.
Where am I going with this? When I print stuff, I like to do it as two-up, double-sided. This is really easy if you have an automatic duplexer on your printer. With Adobe Reader, you can specify the page layout, and then you just tell the printer to use duplex. (On the Mac, and maybe Windows, you can also specify page layout in the generic print dialog box, about which more in a moment.)
But if you don't have a duplexer, manually printing double-sided can be a little confusing. Some printers help out here. For example, the Windows software that came with my Brother laser printer gives me a "manual duplex" option that steps me through the process. Last I checked, though, the Mac driver didn't have this, so I had to figure it out myself.
Admittedly this isn't rocket science, but although the concept is simple, it's easy to get yourself tangled up if you don't start out right. I hope that by providing these steps I can help some people to save a little money and waste less paper.
I'm assuming you're using a laser printer with a manual feed tray that feeds the topmost sheet first. I'm also assuming that when you print, the pages come out face down with the first printed page on the bottom. Finally, these instructions are for documents that are sized for portrait mode on letter size paper.
So here's the procedure:
Open your PDF (or other document) in your program of choice and select Print. Although Adobe Reader has the aforementioned two-up printing option ("multiple pages per sheet", found under the Page Scaling popup menu in the Print dialog box) and can even print booklet-style, I'm going to give steps that will work with any Mac program.
1) If you're using Adobe Reader 9, start by setting the Subset to "All Pages in Range", Page Scaling to "None" or "Fit to Printable Area", make sure you have "Auto Rotate and Center" checked, and that you have the radio button checked to print "All" pages.
If you're using Preview to print a PDF, it's simpler: just go with "Automatically Rotate Each Page" and choose an appropriate scaling option if necessary. Other programs such as Word or Open Office are similar.
2) Now click the main popup menu in the Print dialog box. It might say "copies and pages" or have the same name as the program you're printing from. Within this menu, select "Layout" and then set the Pages per Sheet to "2".
3) Using the same menu, choose "Paper Handling". Set the Pages to Print to "Even Only" and the Page Order to "Reverse". This is the step that's least obvious.
4) Now click print and wait for your print job to complete.
5) When it's done, carefully take the stack of pages from the output and without changing their orientation, put them into the manual feed tray. They should be face down with the lowest-numbered page at the top of the stack.
6) Now go back to your computer, choose the Print command again, and repeat steps 1-4 — but this time in "Paper Handling" select "Odd Only" and "Normal" Page Order.
By the way, don't worry if the number of pages in your document isn't a multiple of four--any "extra" pages will be printed on a final sheet from the main paper tray.
Once the pages come out, they'll be in order, printed back & front.
To make your life even easier, you can use the Presets menu of your Print dialog box to save the two sets of print options. I called them "two-up duplex part one" and "two-up duplex part two".
Although iPod/iPhone Apps that let you transfer files from your computer and/or the Internet have finally made it practical for me to carry RPG documents around for casual reading, I still want to print them out from time to time. One blessing of being near-sighted is that I'm comfortable reading fairly small type — and this dovetails nicely with two of my other qualities, namely being a cheapskate and not wanting to waste natural resources.
Where am I going with this? When I print stuff, I like to do it as two-up, double-sided. This is really easy if you have an automatic duplexer on your printer. With Adobe Reader, you can specify the page layout, and then you just tell the printer to use duplex. (On the Mac, and maybe Windows, you can also specify page layout in the generic print dialog box, about which more in a moment.)
But if you don't have a duplexer, manually printing double-sided can be a little confusing. Some printers help out here. For example, the Windows software that came with my Brother laser printer gives me a "manual duplex" option that steps me through the process. Last I checked, though, the Mac driver didn't have this, so I had to figure it out myself.
Admittedly this isn't rocket science, but although the concept is simple, it's easy to get yourself tangled up if you don't start out right. I hope that by providing these steps I can help some people to save a little money and waste less paper.
I'm assuming you're using a laser printer with a manual feed tray that feeds the topmost sheet first. I'm also assuming that when you print, the pages come out face down with the first printed page on the bottom. Finally, these instructions are for documents that are sized for portrait mode on letter size paper.
So here's the procedure:
Open your PDF (or other document) in your program of choice and select Print. Although Adobe Reader has the aforementioned two-up printing option ("multiple pages per sheet", found under the Page Scaling popup menu in the Print dialog box) and can even print booklet-style, I'm going to give steps that will work with any Mac program.
1) If you're using Adobe Reader 9, start by setting the Subset to "All Pages in Range", Page Scaling to "None" or "Fit to Printable Area", make sure you have "Auto Rotate and Center" checked, and that you have the radio button checked to print "All" pages.
If you're using Preview to print a PDF, it's simpler: just go with "Automatically Rotate Each Page" and choose an appropriate scaling option if necessary. Other programs such as Word or Open Office are similar.
2) Now click the main popup menu in the Print dialog box. It might say "copies and pages" or have the same name as the program you're printing from. Within this menu, select "Layout" and then set the Pages per Sheet to "2".
3) Using the same menu, choose "Paper Handling". Set the Pages to Print to "Even Only" and the Page Order to "Reverse". This is the step that's least obvious.
4) Now click print and wait for your print job to complete.
5) When it's done, carefully take the stack of pages from the output and without changing their orientation, put them into the manual feed tray. They should be face down with the lowest-numbered page at the top of the stack.
6) Now go back to your computer, choose the Print command again, and repeat steps 1-4 — but this time in "Paper Handling" select "Odd Only" and "Normal" Page Order.
By the way, don't worry if the number of pages in your document isn't a multiple of four--any "extra" pages will be printed on a final sheet from the main paper tray.
Once the pages come out, they'll be in order, printed back & front.
To make your life even easier, you can use the Presets menu of your Print dialog box to save the two sets of print options. I called them "two-up duplex part one" and "two-up duplex part two".
