Overlays (Display Only)

The display-only overlays can help you see what’s happening and make sure you’re understanding the imposition and how you’ll bind/assemble/collate it later. Use the check boxes to turn on and off the overlays that you find helpful.

Cuts

Red lines indicate where you’ll cut the sheets down before binding. If you have a 2-up Booklet layout, you won’t have any cuts.

Trim Cuts

If you’ve specified Trim Size and added Printer’s Marks for it, this overlay shows where you’ll be making cuts around the edges of the page.

Folds

Folds are shown with purple dashed lines. These are places where you’ll fold the paper. If you have a Perfect Bound layout, you won’t have any folds.

Page numbers

Page numbers help you see what pages go where, and how each page is rotated. The number next to the overlay shows how many pages are in your original PDF.

If you see a page number with a /* next to it, that’s a blank page that’s been added to have the correct number of pages based on your selections for the format (mostly determined by how many pages per sheet side). For example, if you select a layout with 4 pages per sheet side, then you’re working in increments of 8 pages. (Four pages on each side of the sheet, 4 x 2 = 8.) So if your book content is only 12 pages long, Layout Department will insert blank pages until you get to the next increment of 8 pages. In this case, you’d get 4 blank pages to have 16 pages total. See more in Pages per Sheet Side.

You can also use the page numbers feature before you’ve added your PDF of pages, to test out different layouts. Check the box and enter the number of pages you want in the form field.

Section Letters

If you’re using Sections (also called Signatures), this overlay will label the pages by which section they belong to. The labels are lettered, starting with “a”.

Bleed Area

This transparent overlay highlights the space in your page that will be cut off as part of the Bleed, if you’ve specified one in the Pages section or within the source PDF itself (such as a file prepared in InDesign or Affinity).

Document Outline

This shows a line around the position of your original PDF — most useful if you’ve resized the document relative to the position of the trim marks/bleed marks. (If it’s the same as the trim cuts, this overlay might be partly hidden until you uncheck the trim cuts overlay.)

Unprintable Area

Most printers can’t print all the way to the edge of the page, because then the paper would get stuck in them. To avoid paper jams, printers will usually just not print right to the edges, even if you have content there. The “Unprintable area” overlay is a pink semi-transparent highlight around the edges of the page, that shows where the content might get cut off and not print as you expect. You can use it to check your designs and make sure nothing important is too close to the edge.

Currently this is set to 5mm; in future versions you will be able to change this to be specific to your printers.