Layout Department

About

Layout Department is new software for laying out books and zines. Drag and drop PDFs to make the imposed print files for making books, zines and booklets. It’s a tool for artist publishers, small printshops, and people who like making print publications.

Made by Amelia Greenhall and Adam Greenhall of ANEMONE, the makers of Spectrolite. Please sign up for our newsletter if you’d like to hear updates of what we’re working on, for this app and other projects.

This is new!

EARLY DAYS! If you’re reading this, you’re here in the very beginning. Hello! Thank you!! There will be a new app icon and color scheme! The app and this website are actively under construction: they will change! There is a lot to be built.

FAQ

How do I use the app?

You begin with a PDF of all your pages for a book or zine: drag and drop (or click to choose from the file picker) to bring the pages up to view them in a print layout. Change the menu settings to choose:

  1. The size of the paper you’re printing on (like Letter or A4).
  2. How many pages print per side of the sheet / the size of your resulting book/zine.
  3. Details on the binding (is it on the top or side, for example), and other settings.

This whole process is called imposition. Then press Export to get your print-ready PDF, then print out double sided, cut (if you need to), and bind to make a book or zine.

How to I learn to use all the features?

You can read a lot more in the Documentation or use the Search box to search the website for help. For help with risograph printing the imposed files, the Spectrolite book layout how-to could be helpful as well.

How do I print my files?

The print files you export from Layout Department are meant to be printed double sided, with long-edge binding (that’s typically the default in printer settings). The simplest 2-up booklet layouts then just need to be folded in half and bound. More complicated layouts might need other steps: refer to the overview sheets or turn on the numbered pages and cut/fold overlays to help figure out the binding and assembly for the settings you’ve chosen.

What is the difference between the free edition and a paid license?

The free version has the basic features you need to make a book or zine print file. It is not a trial, you don’t have to enter your payment details, it doesn’t watermark your files, limit the number of pages you can process, serve you third-party ads, there’s not a time limit on how long you can use it, etc. Intended for artists with a simple print-practice, small press publishers, and small print shops.

If you upgrade to a paid license, you get additional layout options, features and more advanced options – see more details on the Pricing page.

How private is this app? Do my PDFs get uploaded to the internet?

Your files stay on your computer, and are not uploaded to the internet. This is so the app can be as fast and as privacy-oriented as possible. (Also, not having the expense of running servers to store/process files is how we’re able to offer the free community edition.)

The main personal data that the app knows is:

  1. When you first start / open the app, the app will contact the server to check for updates. If it sees there is a new version available for you, then it will download it from the server so you can get the new features.
  2. If you have the paid license, the app will occasionally check the servers to re-validate it. A third-party payment processor handles your payment data.
  3. If a bug happens, by default the app will send us the bug report data. The bug reports include computer-code stuff about the error (so we can try to improve things) and not the content of your PDF. You can include a note about what you were trying to do if you want to add context, and have an option to include your email if you want. You can also turn this off completely in the Settings.

There’s more official detail in the Privacy and Terms.

For context, ANEMONE is a two person collaboration (we’re a married couple) making things at our own pace. Our work is self-funded: no venture capital or outside funding and no plans to pursue that. We’re not a tech startup or large company, so we don’t have those incentives to pursue data collection, AI (yikes!), or fast growth. Instead, we get to make privacy focused technical choices, like not uploading PDFs and minimizing data collection.

How does this work with Spectrolite for risograph printing?

If you include printer’s marks (like center marks) in the PDF you make with this layout app, then put the file in to Spectrolite to for color separation, Spectrolite detects that marks came from this layout app and put the marks on the appropriate color layer(s).

You can either export the PDF from Layout Department (for example, if you want to edit it more before doing color separation) or push the Spectrolite button to send the file over there directly.

Are you going to keep the imposition Layouts in Spectrolite also?

Spectrolite’s Layouts still have a few features that aren’t available in Layout Department. Eventually, once we’ve built all the features needed in Layout Department, we plan to remove the imposition layouts entirely from Spectrolite. At that point, you’d use this layout app for imposing and then send the print files to Spectrolite for color separation.