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I'm trying to print a booklet to a PDF file instead of a printer in Adobe InDesign CS6. Adobe Acrobat X Pro is supposed to allow this: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatpro/print-to-pdf.html

So we got Acrobat X Pro, but printing to the PDF doesn't seem to do anything. The print booklet dialog closes and we never get a prompt for a PDF filename, searching our filesystem doesn't show any new files created.. Adobe has a document on printing PDFs on a Mac: http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/feature-details/acrobatpro/pdfs/creating-pdf-files-using-the-print-command-mac.pdf

But that doesn't work either :(. When we choose that Save as PDF option (tried both Save as PDF and Save as Adobe PDF), we get a dialog stating that saving as PDF is not supported in printer dialog.

Tried this on 2 different Macs. Is there another way or better way to print booklets from InDesign CS6 to a PDF file?

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  • Have you been successful using the acrobat printer driver at all from any application? It is installed as a printer and should be visible as a printer from any application.
    – horatio
    Jun 28, 2012 at 19:35
  • it is installed as a printer and no we haven't yet tried it with other apps... good idea, I'll do that
    – at.
    Jun 28, 2012 at 19:37

6 Answers 6

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Acrobat X does not install a print driver on the Mac to the best of my knowledge. Acrobat Stopped installing the PDF printer driver at version 9 on the Mac due to how Apple built in the PDF saving.

I believe your first link is referring to a Windows system since the Mac OS has PDF saving built into the OS print dialogs (as shown in your second link).

All previous PDF print drivers from Acrobat will fail with CS5 or newer.

Here is how to use the Print Booklet.. menu item in conjunction with PDF output.....

After Selecting "Print Booklet..."
Click the "Print Settings" button and...
Print to a Postscript file.... print dialog

You will get a Save dialog when you finally click "Print". This will save a .ps file to whatever location you want. Then drag that .ps file to the Acrobat Distiller icon inside the Adobe Acrobat Pro X application folder.

Distiller

Acrobat Distiller will convert the (bookleted) postscript file (.ps) into a viewable PDF.

The Save as PDF option within Indesign won't paginate the way the Print Booklet.. command does. So if you need Print Booklet, this method is the best way to use that in conjunction with PDF output.

(In reality, this is how all PDF files were created before Adobe built PDF saving and exporting into the other applications.)

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  • Perfect!!! It worked, thanks so much! And with amazing screenshots too!
    – at.
    Jun 29, 2012 at 18:26
  • Another small trick - if you do not select "Device Independent" and rather select one of your available printers, the orientation options should become available then. I did this, then opened the postscript file through preview on OSX Lion, and then saved as PDF and it came out perfect. I selected a printer with driver that I'm printing to when doing this.
    – mservidio
    Jun 5, 2013 at 3:31
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I always find the Device Independent PPD rubbish. It doesn't allow you to define the page size, so unless your booklet spreads are less than A4 they end up cropped after you distill them. And don't get me started on not being able to add crop marks and bleed.

This link (http://forums.adobe.com/message/4741115) explains how to add Acrobat 9 PPD to your PPD options. This allows you to define page sizes including custom page sizes, for when you want to make an A1 size kids book :)

Hopefully Adobe realises that the print industry still needs to use PPD and starts making them again for Acrobat 11.

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Unless I misunderstood the question completely:

The commom method to do this is exporting to PDF dialogue (Cmd+E), which also gives you more control over PDF standard, compatibility, compression and other PDF settings as well as crop and trim.

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  • Adobe InDesign doesn't support export to PDF with booklets unfortunately. Would be ideal if it did...
    – at.
    Jun 29, 2012 at 18:25
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You can use Markzware's PDF2DTP for InDesign to convert your PDF into InDesign, make your changes and then ready it for print.

www.markzware.com/products/pdf2dtp

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  • This answer supposes the PDF came from somewhere else. The question, however, clearly states it was already made in InDesign.
    – Jongware
    Jan 17, 2017 at 23:06
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Use Adobe Distiller to convert postscript file to PDF.

On this issue: It doesn't allow you to define the page size, so unless your booklet spreads are less than A4 they end up cropped after you distill them. And don't get me started on not being able to add crop marks and bleed.

You can change the dimension of the output by going to [Distiller] Settings > Edit Adobe Pdf Settings > Default Page Size > Save As

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If you have deep pockets (e.g. $49.95 USD) there ARE now InDesign plug-ins that do everything that Print Booklet does and more -- except that they create a new InDesign document or PDF file instead of being a print system feature.

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  • 1
    Welcome to GD!! Your answer could be greatly improved if you actually named the plug-ins and even linked to them.
    – Scott
    Aug 29, 2012 at 10:26
  • My favorite (I wrote it) InDesign booklet imposition plug-in is called IDImposer. idimposer.com Stephen Oct 15, 2012 at 10:06

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