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Imposition is a term used in the printing industry. Print operators will print books using large sheets of paper which will be folded later. This allows for faster printing, simplified binding and lower production costs. Imposition is the process of arranging pages correctly prior to printing so that they fold in the correct order. To someone unfamiliar with the imposition process, the pages may seem to be arranged randomly; but after printing, the paper is folded, bound and trimmed. If correctly imposed, the pages should all appear in the correct orientation and readable sequence.
In the example above, a 16 page book is prepared for printing. There are eight pages on the front of the sheet, and the corresponding eight pages on the back. After printing, the paper will be folded in half vertically (page two falls on page three). Then it will be folded again horizontally (page four meets page five). A third fold completes this process. The example below shows the final result prior to binding and trimming.
Modern Techniques
Traditionally, pages would first be exposed and processed onto film. Imposition was then performed manually on a light table using a process called stripping. Skilled workers would spend many hours stripping pieces of film together in the correct sequence and orientation. In recent years, the process of imposition has been automated by computers and is sometimes called digital stripping. An entire book may be imposed and many complex functions applied in an instant. Binding options may be changed on the fly and impositions produced to multiple output devices at once, often with no user-intervention at all.
Printing
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