Duplex Printing in Illustrator
Rachael Giantomasso
Thanks
Rachael Erin
Rachael Giantomasso
Stuart McCoy
Duplex printing is dependent upon your printer supporting this. My Epson 2200 does this and it works quite nicely with lengthy documents. It also is dependent upon there actually being two pages to print. If your printer does not support duplex printing, or your dodument is only one large page (double page, continuous spread for instance) you can always brute force your way through the process.
You would first need to break your Illustrator document into two seperate documents. If there is a raster graphic across the middle you would either need to carefully resize your graphic frame or split your document in Photoshop. After you split your document into two pages, print one of the documents with your printer. Then carefully flip our paper over and replace it in the printer's paper tray. Print the other side of your document and you're done.
I'd run one through as a test and set your printer to print for speed in lieu of quality (low res). This way you can make sure the pages register properly and you have figured out the proper direction for flipping the paper.
You might have to settle for a "close enough" on the registration as your paper tray might not line up exactly. My Epson 2200 prints about 1/32" of an inch off so I have to make allowances in my design for this.
Murad Bushnaq
muradb
Murad Bushnaq
I don't understand exactly how do you make seperate documents and have them print on the same sheet? Sorry i'm sorda new to this. Thanks
Stuart McCoy
Illustrator only works with one physical page at a time, there is no multi-page functionality in the default app. You need to create two different documents, one for each side of the page.
Hotdoor sells a multi-page plug-in <http://www.hotdoor.com/multipage/index.html> but it's more of a hack than anything. Basically they use layers as pages and add a new palette to switch between these pages. You can download a demo and see if it's useful for you.
Stuart McCoy
Let's say you have a double sided document in Illustrator that you need to print double-sided on your inkjet or laserjet printer. If you're having this printed professionally, ignore everything I say and talk to your print shop. They'll help you set up your file for their printers and workflow.
Anyway, you need to create two documents. One document will be the frontside of the and the other will be the backside. When you go to print you simply print the first document (the front), flip your paper over accordingly, replace it in your printer's paper tray and print the second document (the backside).
If your Illustrator document is already a single file with the paper size set to double the width of the actual paper then you can set up both documents simply by duplicating the file, resizing your document paper size and shifting the contents accordingly. For instance, if you are pirnting an two sides of a tabloid sheet (11"x17") your document would be 22"x17" in size. You would duplicate this file and open both in Illustrator. You would then adjust each document's paper size to 11"x17". The contents of document A would be adjusted to fit whatever is supposded to print on the front side within the page tiling margins. Then the contents of document B, the backside, would be asjusted to fit whatever is supposed to be printed on the backside within the page tiling margins. You can then print the document as described previously.
Stuart McCoy
You can't to duplex printing from within Illustrator because it's not a multi-page, page layout application. You need something like InDesign for this.
Rachel's problem was that she had already built her document in Illustrator to be the equivalent of two pages wide (22x17 I'm assuming) since Illustrator can't create a document with two seperate pages. The artboard is the size of the page you are printing on, regardless of whether or not you are printing double side or not.
Now printers don't actually flip the paper and run it through the paper tray for you, even if it supports duplex printing. What a duplex printing option typically means is you rprinter will collate a large, multi-page document (an InDesign document for instance) so you can print all the even pages then flip this stack over and, whtout resorting, print the odd pages.
To do double sided printing in Illustrator you need to create two different documents. One document will be side A (the front) and the other will be side B (the back). You would then open document A and print it with your printer. Then you would flip the paper over and replace it in your paper tray. Open the second document and print it. It will print on the backside of the printing of document A.
Don't set duplex printing, don't setup your document to contain both sides. Illustrator will simply try to print the entire document onto your paper. If you have a 22"x17" layout and you're trying to print it on an 11"x17" paper, it will only print what will fit on the paper, cropping off artwork accordingly.
Murad Bushnaq
thanks again
Murad Bushnaq
I'm trying to print on both sides for flyers i know that your suppose to use the page tool and make 2 pages and then set the printer to "flip on edge" making the printer use its duplexing feature. However my problem is i can't get it to make to pages or i can but its a total fluke and i have to fiddle with it for another 20 min to get it to sorda do what i want! So if anyone can help me it would be greatly appreciated.
Ian A. Wright
I've moved your redundant Topic post to join this thread already in progress. You also have responses to another message in a different thread. Please post only once. Thanks.
Stuart McCoy
If you're printing from Illustrator ignore the printer's duplex settings. Thrn them off in fact. Illustrator is NOT a multi-page layout application so duplexing from it doesn't make any sense.
Take the front side of your flyer and make it an Illustrator document. Make the backside of your flyer a seperate document). Now open the front side in Illustrator. Print this side as many times as necessary. If you need 100 flyers, print it 100 times. Now, take these prints, flip them so that when you print the backside, it will be aligned properly.
On my Epson 2200 I just need to flip the paper along its longer edge and set it back in the paper tray. Your phaser might require some more flips or none at all. If your paper is loaded from the front you will likely not have to flip it over at all.
Once you have figured out how to flip your paper over and have placed these 100 printed pages back into the paper tray you can open the backside document and print this one 100 times. Your printer will refeed the 100 pages you printed earlier and print the backside.
The only printer setting you should make is to print centered on the page. Don't forget to include crop marks in your Illustrator file if your document page size is smaller than your paper size.
Murad Bushnaq
Stuart McCoy
If you want to do proper duplex printing, forget about using Illustrator. You will need to use a multipage layout application like InDesign. If you want to use Illustrator and print on both sides of the page then you will have to follow the directions I have given you and do it manually. There is no other way because Illustrator simply does not understand how to count higher than 1 when it comes to number of pages. Even if you design a multipage layout in Illustrator, to Illustrator it's simply one page, one artboard split with guides representing the seperate pages. There is no front and back, there is simply one side of the page in Illustrator. Period. Exclamation point.
Lee Hills
AI 9 had no problem duplexing and using a printer's built in collation. The problem is that AI 10 generates separate "jobs" for each page of a multiple page layout. Try printing to file. You will be prompted for N files to output to. It is impossible for any collating or duplexing printer to do its job.
Yes it is true that it is not a true multipage layout program. It "tiles" the pages from your artboard. Basically it sends all of the artwork in the artboard to the printer for each "page". It uses a "translate" operator to ajdust the artwork onto each printed page properly.
I too am very irretated by this fact. Adobe should at least give us the option to have one or multiple print "jobs". Why is there a "Collate" check box in the print dialog? It sure is not going to work on printers that perform collation.
If you have Acrobat Distiller, there is a file (C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 5.0\Distillr\Xtras\RUNFILEX.PS) that could make your life a little easier. Just create a series a print files (1.ps, 2.ps, ...) in a subdirectory and then copy RUNFILEX.PS to that subdirectory (renaming it to something practical). Edit the contents of that copied file to just reference the 1.ps 2.ps.... files. Then run that file through Distiller. Out comes your multipage PDF that CAN be duplexed and collated properly.
Hope this helps a little,
Lee
Richard Lin
Shelly Leland
> Yep, this "new" feature of Illustrator 10 pisses me off to no end. I too have a Xerox Phaser 7700 and it's awesome. In fact Illustrator 8 duplexes just fine but it doesn't run under XP. Anyone know if Ill9 runs under XP?