Pardon the Imposition
page 6

Quite Imposing

So far we’ve gone from the very basic to the extremely advanced while looking at imposing software, and for the most part stayed within QuarkXPress. Here is a product that covers what we missed; a mid-priced imposing application exclusively for Acrobat. Quite Imposing from Quite Software is somewhat of an oddity in our look at imposing software. The user interface, and that it’s exclusively an Acrobat Plug-in, sets it apart from most of the other products we’ve examined.

In Acrobat, Quite Imposing will be listed under the Plug-ins menu where you can bring up the control panel. One of the first features I appreciated in this software was the ability to see up front what options were available. Everything can be executed directly from this panel. With the easy imposition options you can start editing your document. The booklet feature lets you create standard two-up flats while n-up pages will allow you to create larger flats. Join 2 Pages will simply combine your current page in the view with the next.

The next set of options is geared toward page management. Most of these will probably be used prior to imposing your document so give these a look before jumping in and imposing. You can shuffle, trim, shift, reverse, add blank pages and more. These options are nice to have, especially while imposing a PDF where it may not be as easy to just jump back to the original document and make your edits.

Much like the other programs we looked at, you can save your settings in Imposing for later use. I should point out that Quite Software has put their own twist on how this works. In QuarkImposer and INposition we saw how settings were saved. In Quite Imposing it’s more like saving an action in Photoshop. In fact, once you are done editing your document select the Remember Last button and all the actions you used in your last document will be available. Give it a custom name and use it the next time a similar document comes your way.

We’ve discussed the features in Quite Imposing that more or less are also in the other imposing software, so what makes this application different? As I said earlier, the user interface has a twist that we haven’t seen much of yet — it’s actually helpful! After selecting the action you want from the control panel, Quite Imposing will walk you through each of the steps necessary to complete that action. Most every option is also accompanied by a short explanation. For users unfamiliar with imposing software, this is just the place to begin. With a little help from Quite Imposing you’ll get your document ready for print. However, for advanced users this interface will probably become tedious. I found myself just wanting one screen to enter my settings.

Running my same 80-page document through Quite Imposing went smoothly, even quicker than I expected. I started arranging my document with the page-management tools. As I mentioned, these are valuable tools for quickly editing your document within Acrobat. I added four blank pages, shuffled the pages so all evens and odds were grouped, and reversed the order of the pages with no problem. After editing the single sheets I moved on to imposing the document. I first used the booklet option, which was a no-frills way of getting two-up saddle stitched flats. N-up let me arrange the pages in four-up and eight-up flats with some minor work. You’ll have to define your own custom paper size when working with these larger flats to get the correct imposition. My choice of flat size did not always mesh with my custom paper size. This resulted in having to switch between dialog boxes to fix the paper size to allow the larger spread. It would be nice if these larger spreads were generated as easily as the booklet option. While running my document through the software, I noticed the lack of color bar and crop marks options. You can add basic crop marks and frames around the pages but don’t look much further than that.

After using Quite Imposing, it was hard to decide whether this software or QuarkImposer would be my choice for imposing in Acrobat. For a few more dollars Quite throws in the page-management tools, which are absent in QuarkImposer. Quite Imposing definitely wins out for being more customizable but lost some points with me when it came to the user interface. One feature Quite Imposing could benefit from is a dedicated preview palette like that of QuarkImposer. I would suggest trying the demo for both these products to drill down on your decision.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | Comparison 1 | Comparison 2 | PDF Version

If you enjoy our articles, click here to subscribe.
Free JavaScripts provided by The JavaScript Source