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About Creep

In a folded (e.g. saddle stitched) booklet or signature the inner pages progressively extend (creep) further out than the outer pages. After trimming the inner pages are narrower than the outer pages. If the pages were printed with static margins then, after folding and trimming, the effective margins of the pages towards the center of the signature will progressively become narrower, and, if the signature is thick enough the margins may even disappear and some content may have been cut away during trimming.

Signature (Booklet) before and after trimming.

Creep varies depending on the thickness of the paper and the number of pages in the signature.

Creep is also known as thrust or push-out. Compensating for creep is also known as shingling.

Setting the amount of creep at the document level

To measure the sheets use a number of stacked sheets whose thickness is easy to measure with a ruler.

  1. Bring up the Document Settings Dialog [File→Document Settings… ⌃⌥⌘D] and select the Imposition tab.
  2. In the Creep group box enter the number of sheets in the measured stack of paper in the first field.
  3. Use the ruler to measure the thickness of the stack and enter that amount in the second field (indicating the unit type if necessary (eg mm or in, etc)).
  4. Click OK to confirm your settings and dismiss the dialog.

PDFClerk will calculate the creep for each page according to the numbers you entered, and apply it to the all layouts in this document from now on (including the currently shown layout).

Creep can also be specified at the imposition template level, in which case that setting will be used for any document that uses that imposition.

See also

Layout Topics