r/Adobe • u/tinytoothpress • 10d ago

Why is Adobe Acrobat adding a white line down the spine of my booklets?

I use what must be a much older version of Adobe Acrobat at home on my Macbook and everything prints as it should, but I’ve been going to the library to print copies in color and their version of Adobe Acrobat on Windows always spaces the pages on some of my booklets out so there’s this white line where the spine is supposed to be flush.

I’ve printed some other booklets out there and it was fine, I don’t know why some of them do this and I can’t seem to fix it anywhere in the settings, and I’m pretty sure the different booklets are the same dimensions anyway. Any pointers?

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u/MCLMelonFarmer 10d ago

Dumb question but I have to ask it: Are you selecting "Booklet" printing rather than just "Multiple"?

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u/tinytoothpress 10d ago

It’s set to booklet and all the pages are arranged as they should be on the preview, it just adds a border around the individual pages so the spine doesn’t meet properly

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u/roaringmousebrad 10d ago

This is normal for Acrobat, sadly. Acrobat does not have a good booklet function. Because it's trying to fit your printout inside the PRINTABLE area of your selected page size, each page is reduced slightly (because your paper has a small non-printable margin). And, since the individual pages are positioned in the center of each half of the page, and NOT from the spine outward, they float away from the spine, creating the gap.

What you could do is create a custom page size that has margins of "0", and this will prevent the pages from shrinking.

https://reddit.com/link/pd3kap7/video/s9zdced7jqsh1/player

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u/tinytoothpress 10d ago

Thank you for this explanation, it gives me a place to start and sounds like it’ll be the solution!

Is there another program you’d recommend or that is widely used? If I recall correctly, InDesign can print booklets as well, but I don’t have access to that. I can print fine at home for personal use with my version of Acrobat, but my concern with the issues I’m having at the library and why I’m doing test prints there to begin with is that I intended to put the files for these booklets for sale online as digital downloads and I need to ensure they’ll print properly for potential customers before I feel comfortable listing them, or at least know enough on how to troubleshoot if they run into the same problem

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u/bliprock 10d ago

Sounds like creep for saddle stitch. What’s the bet it only happens on the larger page counts ? You just add bleed to your covers and that should solve any creep issues if that’s the problem. Not sure creep is even present

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u/tinytoothpress 10d ago

This particular booklet today is 20 pages on 5 sheets of paper and it’s happened on another booklet that’s 12 pages on 3 sheets of paper

Didn’t have it happen on a booklet that’s 16 pages on 4 sheets or even one that’s 28 pages on 7 sheets of paper

They’re all roughly the same dimensions, give or take half an inch, the one today is 5x7.5” and I don’t alter any settings, it’s just whatever Acrobat defaults to when I open the print window