Imagemagick Imposition

This article is part of the Scripts series.

Below is a bash script depending on ImageMagick 6.2.x which makes simple imposition of PNG files exported from Scribus.

Version: IMpos 1.0 11.10.2006 Copyright: Mikołaj Machowski 2006 ( mikmach AT wp DOT pl )

Usage: impos -o format [options]

Options:

 -c	 - color of background (default: white)
 -d	 - directory for outut (default: imposout)
 -h	 - this help
 -m	 - multiply first image to fill empty sheets
 -o	 - format of transformation, arguments are
          2up       - 2-Up
          4ss       - 4-Up Saddle-Stitching
          4tumble   - 4-Up Work-and-Tumble
          4turn     - 4-Up Work-and-Turn
          8tumble   - 8-Up Work-and-Tumble
          8tur      - 8-Up Work-and-Turn

More info about imposition on: http://www.prepress.pps.com/TechReports/imposetr.html

WARNING: it takes the same order of pages as return by the ls command, but Scribus creates filenames in natural order like:

   filename-page1.png, filename-page2.png .. filename-page10.png

You surely can see the danger: the listing will be output in the "computer" order, e.g.: 1, 10, 11, 12, ..., 2, 21, etc. To avoid such problems you should attach a leading 0 to numbers (01, 02, 03, etc.). IMO it would be a good thing if Scribus did that by itself, it would help in all situations where the proper sorting of listings is important.

This is simple imposition targeted toward simply home jobs to fit in A4/A3 printer, without crop/fold/register marks. If someone would be interested in getting those features I will expand it. Note: bleed space will be never supported due to the nature of image export from Scribus  :)

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