How-to guide
A perfect-bound book is printed in signatures: big sheets that each fold down into a section of 16 or 32 pages. The sections are gathered in order, ground off at the spine and glued into the cover. Each fold scheme puts the pages in a different place on the sheet. This guide imposes a 96-page A4 brochure as six 16-page signatures on SRA1 in Metre2 Print Imposition Pro, checks the fold and works out the spine.
Open the book's PDF and choose Perfect bound on the Layout tab. To follow along, open the 96pp A4 brochure sample: 96 A4 pages on SRA1 sheets.
96 pages make six 16-page signatures. Open Sig 3 in the Job panel: pages 33-48. Its front carries 37, 44, 41 and 40 head to head above 36, 45, 48 and 33. Click page 37 for its position and rotation.
Fold scheme lists the schemes for a 16-page section: F16-7 (three right-angle folds, the standard 16) and F16-6 (a head fold then two parallel folds). Use the one your folding machine is set up for; the pages move to match.
The Folding dummy plays the folds - right half over, top half down, right half over - then turns the section over and reads the pages off: 33 to 48 in order, heads up, spine on the left. The Signatures table shows the same check for all six.
Under Creep and stock, the spine width comes from the leaves and the caliper: 48 leaves x 0.105 mm + 0.6 mm for the glue = 5.64 mm. Grind-off (3 mm here) and the spine gap between pages are in the Signature group.
A printed sheet that folds into a section of pages - usually 8, 16 or 32. Books are made of several signatures gathered in order and bound.
It's a fold scheme name in the CIP4/JDF style: a 16-page section (F16) folded with the seventh scheme in the catalogue, three right-angle folds. F16-6 is a different 16-page scheme with a head fold and two parallel folds.
Leaves (pages / 2) x the paper's caliper, plus an allowance for the glue or cover. 96 pages on 0.105 mm paper is 48 x 0.105 = 5.04 mm, plus 0.6 mm = 5.64 mm.
Perfect binding, books over 32 pages and the fold-scheme library are in Print Imposition Pro, with a 7-day free trial.
