To fit multiple pages on a single page, you can create thumbnails—small preview versions of your document. Thumbnails are useful for verifying content and organization. Where appropriate, InDesign automatically changes the paper orientation to provide the best fit of the page to the paper; however, you’ll need to reset the original orientation if you deselect the Thumbnails option.
When you print thumbnails, printer’s marks and any items in the bleed and/or slug areas are excluded.
Although you can create InDesign documents as large as 18-by-18 feet, most desktop printers cannot print such large pages.
To print an oversized document on your desktop printer, you can print each page of your document in pieces, called tiles, and then trim and assemble those pieces. If you prefer, you can scale the document to fit the available paper size.
A document’s dimensions do not necessarily match the paper sizes used by printers. As a result, when you print, InDesign divides the oversized document into one or more rectangles, or tiles, that correspond to the page size available on the printer. You can then assemble the overlapping sections.
You can have InDesign tile a document automatically, or you can specify the tiles yourself. Tiling manually lets you control the origin point for the upper-left corner of the tile, so that you determine where the page falls on the paper.
Auto
Automatically calculates the number of tiles required, including the overlap.
Auto Justified
Increases the amount of overlap (if necessary) so that the right sides of the rightmost tiles are aligned at the right edge of the document’s page, and the bottom sides of the bottommost tiles are aligned at the bottom edge of the document’s page.
While tiling a document automatically prints all the tiles at once, tiling a document manually requires you to print each tile separately.
The size and shape of the area InDesign prints is determined by the current paper size and orientation.
To fit an oversized document on a smaller piece of paper, you can scale the document’s width and height, either symmetrically or asymmetrically. Asymmetric scaling is useful when, for example, you’re printing film for use on a flexographic press: If you know in which direction the plate will be mounted on the press drum, scaling can compensate for the 2% to 3% stretching of the plate that usually occurs. Scaling does not affect the size of the pages in the document.
When you print spreads, each spread is scaled separately.
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