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Scribus => Beginner Talk => Topic started by: green_chaaa on April 24, 2011, 06:23:51 AM

Title: Greeting card layout/template
Post by: green_chaaa on April 24, 2011, 06:23:51 AM
Hi. I'm new to Scribus, but am very excited about using it. It's so useful.. I've used it to lay-out my English project poster, and create a poster for a community event. This time, I want to do something different.

Mothers' Day is coming up, and I want to make a greeting card. Specifically, I want to make a card from a letter-sized piece of paper folded into four parts. If you lay it out, the pages from the top left, clockwise, are the front, back, second interior, and first interior pages.

I remember that with Microsoft Publisher, which my school has but I don't, there were templates that could be used to create a greeting card. Scribus, I don't think, has one. I've tried looking for one too. I've decided to create my own template, but I'll need some guidance. Specifically to change the orientation of stuff on top of the page. I don't want to keep on rotating stuff.

Any help would be appreciated.
Title: Re: Greeting card layout/template
Post by: Nermander on April 24, 2011, 11:05:02 AM
I really think is could be easier to design it as four separate pages and use some impositioning software to put them together. (I'd use Multivalent, because I'm used to it.)

You might also be able to design everything the correct way and then group and rotate the "pages" that shall be upside down.

Or, maybe even use Scribus for the imposition. Create it as four separate pages (1/4 of the final page size), export to PDF, split into one PDF per page, create a new Scribus document, import the pages into rotated image frames, export to final PDF.
Title: Re: Greeting card layout/template
Post by: green_chaaa on May 01, 2011, 09:58:23 PM
Thanks. If I have any questions, I'll ask.
Title: Re: Greeting card layout/template
Post by: green_chaaa on June 17, 2011, 04:54:03 AM
Actually, now that I've printed out a computerized Father's Day card (I didn't have the time to make one for Mother's Day), I have some questions. I used Adobe Reader X to print out my PDF document into a booklet - the trouble is that it would only allow me to print out 2 pages at a time.

I'm uneasy about using impositioning software, as I have no clue how to use them and I didn't find the tutorials on the internet particularly helpful.

I don't know what you mean by "doing everything the correct way" either.

Nor could I import PDF files into image frames!

Do you have any suggestions for the future? Thanks.
Title: Re: Greeting card layout/template
Post by: Meho R. on June 17, 2011, 10:34:03 AM
+1 for multivalent. Using imposition tools isn't that hard, really. Here's a slightly modified example from another thread (http://forums.scribus.net/index.php/topic,111.msg432.html):

1. Download multivalent from here (http://www.mediafire.com/?t80sqnx9mmtbzyg) (this is an older version, since the newer has some problems with licensing imposition part of the tool).

2. Save your document as a PDF file, let's call it mydoc.pdf.

3. Put the file in the same folder where you put multivalent, and run the following command in that folder (using Terminal, if you're using Linux, or Command Prompt, if you're using Windows):

java -cp Multivalent.jar tool.pdf.Impose -dim 2x1 -layout 2,3,4,1 -paper "297x210 mm" mydoc.pdf


Just modify values for -dim, -layout and -paper to your liking. More infos about multivalent here (http://multivalent.sourceforge.net/Tools/pdf/Impose.html) and here (http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/How_to_make_impositions_with_Multivalent), and about other tools here (http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/PDF,_PostScript_and_Imposition_tools).
Title: Re: Greeting card layout/template
Post by: Nermander on June 17, 2011, 11:59:21 AM
For the imposing software to work correctly you normally need one PDF containing all the pages you want to impose.

The for the imposing software, your first tell it how many "cells" you want to split each page of your sheet into. In your example this would be two rows and two columns, giving you for "cells". With multivalent this is the -dim option.

The next thing is to tell the imposing software which page from your PDF you want to put in which "cell". Mutilvalent for example fill the cells consecutive from left to right, one row at a time starting at the top.

You also need to tell the imposing software whether the page shall be rotated or not. For some imposing software you also need to tell the alignment of the page within the "cell" (sometimes the "cells" are bigger than the page).

With multivalent this is done with the -layout option. Rotated pages are suffixed with r (rotate 90 degress right), l (rotate left) ur u (180 degree rotation).

I think for what you want the parameters are:

-dim 2x2 -layout 1u,4u,2,3


What I meant by "the correct way" was "not rotated" (for the imposition you want, two of the pages must be printed upside down).