I have a two page PDF, page 1 is business card front, page 2 is business card back.
I want to print 9 copies of page 1 on sheet 1, then print 9 copies of page 2 on sheet two (duplex printing prints it on the back of page 1).
So, how can I print page 1 9 up, and page 2 9 up without manually making 9 copies?
The Mac OS X Preview app does this for you.
Since you don't specify OS, I'm not sure if this helps, but I just used it successfully after finding this post and many others via Google asking the same question.
I use Adobe Indesign to do this all the time.
You can place links to the same file multiple times, with the added advantage that if you update the file, all your references update
The GNOME printer dialog will let you do this, but that's not helpful unless you're using Linux :-) CorelDRAW has a beautiful imposition tool, and you can embed PDFs in your documents. CutePDF Pro (Windows only) has a pretty decent PDF imposition tool, although I don't find it as elegant as CorelDRAW.
And for basic, bare-metal, command-line PDF imposition, I use pdfnup from the PDFJam project (UNIX, Linux, and Mac OS X only, sorry). An example I use often (a two-page 4¼×5½" PDF, imposed four times onto two 8½×11" pages):
pdfnup --paper letterpaper --nup 2x2 input.pdf '1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2' --outfile output.4up.pdf --no-landscape
Looking at each argument:
--paper letterpaper specifies the paper size, of course
--nup 2x2 says I want 4-up in a 2×2 grid, of course; you'd want --nup 3x3 instead
input.pdf the two-page input file
'1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2' the layout of the pages -- so I want each of the four copies on page 1 of the output file to be from page 1 of the input file, and so on
--outfile output.4up.pdf the name of the imposed file
--no-landscape pdfnup tries to do imposition intelligently, but sometimes it comes up with idiotic arrangements. For me it shrank the pages (something you may want with your 3×3 layout, but I definitely didn't) and put them into the middle of a landscape page. This option forced it into portrait.
When we do business cards, we have a mechanical file which has the actual cards as 9up (one page with nine images). The "final" file is one card which gets approved by the client, and then that content gets reproduced nine times for the page which goes to the printer.
These did not work for me buuuut I found a way. I created my busines card on Canva. I duplicated my 2 page pdf 5 times. Then I used ilovepdf.com to merge to make one pdf with 10 pages. I opened in Adobe, clicked Print, Multiple. I select Custom under Pages per sheet and set it to 2 by 5 and Voila!! 5 double sided cards per page.I then save as a pdf.all done!! you can do the same for a single side card. Duplicate it 10 times.. merge all 10.(Do not use your original). Open in Adobe , Print, Multiple, Custom 2 by 5 and save as pdf.
