We've discovered a need for impositioning software for printing offset plates for booklets from InDesign. Looking around the web it seems that the most common plug-ins for InDesign are InPlate and one creatively called "InDesign Imposition Plug-in".

Does anyone here have experience with these? I'm wondering if one might be better than the other. I don't really have enough experience with this stuff to judge for myself from the website info.

Sorry, no. I haven't, personally. You might want to try a local print company… they'd have the best insight (unless someone here happens to know). Are there no demo plug-ins to try out?

This is what I am using Nikita Rokotyan Graphic/Sound Designer (http://www.rokotyan.com/) look on the sidebar for Rhimposition, scripts It works great for being free. There are other scripts and programs out there such as the ones that you had mentioned, it's just a matter of how much you would like to pay for the software.

There are other imposition programs that plug into Acrobat as well, so that may be an option for you also.

Thanks for the advice.

I do work for a very small printer in the Gulf Islands. So far we have been able to manage with the Print Booklet commands in ID to make our offset plates, but a couple of odd size jobs have made that difficult. One of them I had to manually create a new document and set up every page of a 40 page booklet -- not fun. We are in contact with a printer in town that uses Quite Imposing, which is a standalone imposition program. That's probably more than we need at this point, hence I was looking around for plug-ins.

Thanks for the recommendation for Rhimposition. I hadn't seen that in my searching yesterday. The only thing is, the idea of downloading software from Russia, gives me a few willies -- this is legit, right. :)

Thanks for the recommendation for Rhimposition. I hadn't seen that in my searching yesterday. The only thing is, the idea of downloading software from Russia, gives me a few willies -- this is legit, right. :)

It looks good, it is on the adobe exchange as well Adobe - InDesign Scripts (http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?event=extensionDetail&extid=1705026) that is where I first found it and ended up doing some more research on it and saw it in the comments.

But then again inplate is only 49 euros.

I use croptima, which is a fantastic little imposition tool for indesign, and cheap as well. Adobe InDesign imposition plug in, InDesign CS5 imposition plug in and InDesign CS4 imposition plug in and InDesign CS3 imposition plug in. Read the FAQ or get high-quality support for all Croptima plug ins like InPlate, the InDesign professionals' c (http://croptima.com/)

I use from imposing business cards to 8 page signatures, it goes up to 16 page I believe. You cant go wrong with the price really.

Thanks for all the advice. We tried the InDesign Imposition Plugin today and after playing around with it for a while it seemed to do the job. I've downloaded the Croptima InPlate demo and I'm going to try Rhimposition also.

I think Croptima is the only one that gives a visual before the job is imposed, at least for Indesign plugins. I had used one before croptima that was a script and did the job, but sometimes I would set something wrong and would not know till it was all imposed. What I like about croptima is I can see visually what I am doing before I do it. Its very fast and works well for most things, handling any paper size, as you customize what your sheet size is, not limited to standard sizes. It has been really reliable, does all the work of imposing 8 page signatures for magazines, taking a lot of prep work of making dummy flats. Good luck with your search!