I have a choral score with an octavo page size (171mm x 266mm), which I want to print on A3 paper as a booklet, with crop marks, so that I can trim it down and fold it to make an anthem-sized booklet. Sibelius handles this very easily, so, knowing that Dorico is developed by the old Sibelius team, and aims to be better, I was expecting it to work in a similar way. But I can find no way to achieve it.
Whether I print to paper or export as a graphic, Dorico insists on scaling the page up to A4. I have tried (as has been suggested elsewhere) creating an Octavo custom paper size for my printer, but whereas other apps see that when I use the print dialogue, Dorico stubbornly refuses to see it, and only offers the default sizes.
If Dorico can’t print the booklet direct, I could open the PDF in Create Booklet (Mac app) and go from there. All I need is a PDF that’s at the actual page size (octavo) rather than A4. But I can’t find a way to make Dorico do this. Given that professional publishing houses use Dorico, there must be a way…
When you Export as a graphic, Dorico always uses the Layout’s page size. The dialogue may show A4, but it will be greyed out. So exporting as a PDF Graphic will give you Octavo.
Do you want to print 2 (or more) pages on one A3 sheet?
There are booklet-making controls in the Print mode, if you want to just make booklet spreads (e.g. page 16 and 1 on one side of the sheet; page 2 and 15 on the reverse, etc.)
Thanks. I’ve set the sclaing to Custom 100%, and used the booklet option to print on A3. As you can from the screenshot below, it still scales it up to fill the page. You can just see the crop marks in the corner - they should be an inch or so down the page.
Yes, it does look as though when you select “Spreads” or “Booklet” (or “2-up”), the scaling goes a bit off. If you do use the scaling (e.g. set it to something like 50%), each page is centred on each half of the sheet, rather than being back to back. I’m trying to work out what scaling value would give “Actual Size” – it’s not 71% (the usual A-series scaling factor), but something larger than that, c. 82%.
I’d suggest outputting the PDF as pages, and then imposing in other software.
In Dorico Print mode, select Graphics, job type Normal, then use the Export button at the bottom right of the screen - NOT File>Export, or File>Print
Open the resulting PDF in Create Booklet and set the scaling to 100%. Tock the Crop Box option and print.
It works! I can breathe again!
Would be nice if Dorico could emulate Sibelius and include this as a direct feature within the programme, rather than having to use a third-party app, but at least there’s a way.
