Multipage Illustrator

[Jezza]

With Adobe killing off Freehand some users are bemoaning the fact that Illustrator doesn’t support multiple pages amongst other things. It is possible to create multiple page documents in Illustrator, but not quite in the way other multipage applications do.

As an example a two/four page A4 document. Make the artboard 420 millimeters wide by 297 millimeters high. In the print dialogue box under the Setup section, select ‘Tile Full Pages’ from the tiling pop-up menu. Next go to the General section and change the page orientation so that it looks like what you want.

When you go back to the document window make sure that have ‘Show Page Tiling’ switched on under the View menu. You should see two side-by-side pages with non-printing numbers “1″ and “2″ in the lower left corner.

If you then save as a pdf it will be a two page document. However there is a small snag with this. In the Save dialogue box you have an option to ‘Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities’, if this is switched on, your pdf will only be a single page, so switch it off. If you then want to open the pdf in Illustrator again, Illustrator will ask which page you’d like to open.

I don’t recommend editing pdfs in Illustrator.

Alternatively you can do something sensible, like using Illustrator for illustration and InDesign for multiple page documents.

Another alternative would be to use this http://www.hotdoor.com/multipage/index.php.

One edit...

I forgot to thank The Nerg for this tip

[Ratbag]

I was thinking the other day that it's be cool if there was a plugin for illustrator that added multi-page support but you could only get it if you worked in prepress.

Designers and amateurs could not access it, but we could use it when having to get 50 business cards set up in ai out in to a usable format quickly.

some real idiots out there.... *grumble*

[JimG]

Designers and amateurs could not access it, but we could use it when having to get 50 business cards set up in ai out in to a usable format quickly.

Had a customer send in an 8 page booklet in illustrator, they did each page in a separate layer. :roll:

[David]

Originally Posted by JimG

Had a customer send in an 8 page booklet in illustrator, they did each page in a separate layer. :roll:

we got a 16 pager in done the same way...

hmmm...

wonder if they came from the same place?

who taught these people how to do this stuff anyway???


man o man!

8O

[dnewc]

I believe Hot Door has a plug in made for Illy specifically for multi page docs....

http://www.hotdoor.com/index.php?content=main

[Jezza]

They have indeed :wink:

Originally Posted by Jezza

http://www.hotdoor.com/multipage/index.php.

Welcome along dnewc, the water's lovely once you get in

[P-Rex]

Of course it would be much easier to create the document in Quark or InDesign, but that would be too simple :lol:

[chm]

Originally Posted by P-Rex

Of course it would be much easier to create the document in Quark or InDesign, but that would be too simple :lol:

I agree on that.
Illustrator is still a vector based drawing tool, we dont ask that Photoshop cant make multiple pages :=)

So If you wanna make multiple pages use Indesign or Xpress, thats what their designed for.

[SIMON]

Originally Posted by JimG

Had a customer send in an 8 page booklet in illustrator, they did each page in a separate layer. :roll:

The HotDoor plug-in works the same way, 1 page on a different layer. The only good thing is the print dialog see's each layer AS a page, so 8 layers would be a page range 1-8.

So maybe your client has the plug-in, but if you don't, then you'll only see it as an 8 layered Illustrator file.

[Helmet_of_Poe]

We have a client that supplies individual Illustrator files for each page of a 92 page book...a book that we print once a month.

I finally talked the designer into supplying each page as a PDF to our specs. Now we can throw the whole lot of them into Printready and we're off and running.

The next time I talk to the designer I'll casually mention to him (for the 4th or 5th time) how much easier his life would be if he built these books in InDesign. Funny thing is, when I've talked to the guy in the past he always sounds as if he doesn't even have time to stop and pee. I wonder why...