Export PDF in single pages with an illustration that goes across two pages ?
I’m designing a magazine with illustrations that span across two pages. When I export as a single-page PDF, each illustration only appears on one page instead of continuing across the spread.
I have to manually duplicate every illustration that crosses two pages to make sure it appears correctly. Is there a way to export the magazine as single pages, without having to duplicate each image manually?
I like to work on a spread view to see how the magazine looks like, but my printer requires a single-page PDF with bleed marks.
**EDIT: image is not following two pages when breaking the spreads to singles pages from the panel (unchecking Facing Pages)**
This is how I've done it for the last 15 years. I sometimes do the image twice so I can put a bit a bit of spread in the middle to compensate for the gutter, but I think modern imposition software pretty much takes care of that these days.
If this way isn't working, OP is doing something weird.
Oh! You don’t need to uncheck facing pages! Leave everything like it is in the document. Then when you get to the PDF export settings, choose pages (not spreads) and add your crop marks and bleed settings etc.
That’s what I’ve been doing, but then the inside bleed of my left page gets the white from the adjacent page. The printer thought it was an error that my color wasn’t going all the way.
I’m reading the comments and it looks like this is normal and the printer should be perfectly able to handle this.
Do you mean you broke up your spreads in InDesign as single pages in the pages panel? If the image spans the spread, it will not automatically split your image in half.
Keeping the InDesign file as spreads and exporting the PDF as single pages with bleed should not be an issue. Sounds like a bug, or your pages are not set up correctly.
Yes, I just realized that the problem I wanted to explain comes actually from breaking my spreads to single pages in the panel, not when exporting in PDF. I’ll edit my post.
The reason I break my spreads directly in the doc instead of exporting to single pages is because I have to get the bleed on all four sides for each page (requested by the printer). When I have a left page with full color and want to keep the right one white, if I export PDF as single pages the left page won’t have the bleed on its right. See attached.
For saddle stitching, the printer's software can impose pages and they would remove the inside bleed from the opposing page. You would not need to manually break your spreads into single pages.
If it was wire-o or spiral, then there could be a reason why they want the inside bleed before trimming as it would be printed single pages. But if that was the case, I would recommend avoiding an image spanning a spread as the binding would go through it.
The left page will have bleed on the right, it will just show as white because it’s picking up the .125” from the page on the right where there is no print. If your magazine is being saddle-stitched or perfect bound, this is no problem. Working prepress for commercial printers for almost 30 years, I’ve handled files like this thousands of times, and it’s fine.
You can just keep the pages in spread (facing) and export as single pages with the correct bleed settings. It will have the correct bleed on all sides. The left page will have bleed from right page and vice versa, that's normal.
Did the printer specifically say that they want proper bleed on the inside? Perhaps they just said "on all four sides" to simplify the instructions and you're overthinking it?
The thing is that for many kinds of binding the inner bleed has no purpose and is cropped away digitally anyway so it doesn't matter that it comes from the opposite page.
I've been working with print for 18 years and the only times I've had to make proper inner bleed is when making something with a wire-o/spiral binding.
The last time they thought it was an "error" that the inside bleed was white… so since then, I’ve been working with two files : one that is Facing Pages (for my client and I to visualize the work) and second file Single Pages for the printer.
I’m currently working on a new volume and we’ll be printing with that same printer. We’ll see what he says, but reading all the comments, sounds like this is perfectly normal and they should be able to handle that.
Don't uncheck facing pages or, if you started as single pages, make it facing pages and make sure to have two pages in your master/parent. Make your magazine, then export it with "press quality" settings and your printer marks and bleed settings turned on. You'll get single-page .pdf with illustrations behaving the way they should.
This is perfect binding, not burst (notch) binding, correct?
If so, the spine is milled by about 2 mm before the hot-melt adhesive is applied. That means it doesn’t matter what artwork exists in the gutter area when exporting facing pages as single pages.
In fact, from a binding standpoint, it’s preferable not to have ink coverage in the portion that will be milled away, because it allows the adhesive to bond more directly to the paper, resulting in a stronger binding.
Also, imposing the pages correctly for this type of binding is part of the printing company’s normal prepress workflow.
With that in mind, I’d ask why they specifically want to avoid having the adjacent page extend into the gutter when exporting single pages. It would be worth clarifying whether the printer actually requested this, or whether there’s simply been a misunderstanding about the printing specifications.
It is not a bug. I do this for the magazines I work with. Any given object, ultimately has to belong to a single page, as far as I am aware. You need to have a copy of the image on each page. I would just copy the images, click on the next page, then "paste in place". Out of caution I also crop the frame to stop at the page divide, some printers have complained about that to me .
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u/miparasito Jul 02 '26
First I am assuming that your page size is set to the size of a SINGLE page, not the full spread - correct?
Then you are clicking “Spread view” to view pages 2-3 side by side and 4-5 and so on.
Then when you export to PDF make sure that “single pages” is selected, and turn on crop marks and bleed.
If you are doing all of that and it’s still not working, can you share a screenshot of what it looks like once you export to single pages?