Monday 17 October 2011

What is design for print? Imposition

Imposition

(Wikipedia) Imposition is one of the fundamental steps in the prepress printing process. It consists in the arrangement of the printed product’s pages on the printer’s sheet, in order to obtain faster printing, simplified binding and less waste of paper. Correct imposition minimizes printing time by maximizing the number of pages per impression, reducing cost of press time and materials. To achieve this, the printed sheet must be filled as fully as possible.

Imposition can be affected by the following:

  • Format of the product: The size of the finished page determines how many pages can be printed on a single sheet. 
  • Number of pages of the printed product: The compositor must determine how many sheets are to be printed to create a finished book. 
  • Stitching/binding method: The compositor must understand how the sheets are placed to form the signatures that compose the finished book. 
  • Paper fiber direction: Many papers have a "grain," reflecting the alignment of the paper fibers. That these fibers must run lengthwise along the fold influences the alignment, hence the position, of the pages on the printed sheet. 
  • Finishing and binding

Imposition Software carries out the most important task in the printing industry. Print operators will print books using huge sheets of paper, to be folded later. This allows for faster printing and lower production costs. Imposition is the process of arranging pages correctly prior to printing so that they fold in the correct order. To someone unfamiliar with the imposition process, the pages may seem to be arranged randomly; but after printing, the paper is folded, bound and trimmed. If correctly imposed, the pages should all appear in the correct orientation and readable sequence.


Imposition dummy

An imposition dummy should be created in order to envision how the pages relate to one another. 


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