The ZineArranger
Arrange multi-page PDF files into a printable zine layout!
Supports the following zine formats:
- Minizine (Eighth-Size)
- Quarter Size
- Half Size
With options for:
- Portrait/Landscape orientation
- Single/Double sided printing (for Mini's & Quarter Size)
- Side/Top fold (for Mini's & Quarter Size)
- Paper size (US Letter / A4 / Custom)
Tips
- This tool uses your browser's print function to actually lay everything out. You can print it directly from the tool, or you can Print to File / Save as PDF to save the printable version. Since different browsers have different print tools, it's possible some of them won't play nicely with this tool, but so far it seems to work on the ones that I've tried.
- For double-sided printing, you may need to tell your printer to "Flip on the long edge" or "Flip on the short edge". The pages should always be laid out to flip along the side of the zine, so choose based on whether the side is long or short!
- It's always a good idea to set your Page Size to the actual dimensions of the individual pages once they're printed & folded, to ensure you've got the correct aspect ratio. If the ratio isn't correct, Zine Arranger will fit the pages as best it can, but you might end up with a little extra space at the top & bottom, or at the sides. (If you're using A-size paper, you actually don't need to worry about this, because your ratios will always be the same!)
- Here's a quick cheat-sheet of page sizes (for US Letter size paper, Portrait orientation; switch 'em around if you're doing Landscape!):
- Half Size - 5.5"x8.5"
- Quarter Size - 4.25"x5.5"
- Eighth Size / Mini - 2.75"x4.25"
- Here's a quick cheat-sheet of page sizes (for US Letter size paper, Portrait orientation; switch 'em around if you're doing Landscape!):
Troubleshooting
- Your zine prints & the folds aren't lined up anymore, or the page alignment gets weird.
- The most common culprit is the print app shrinking the content to fit on the page. Look for a Scale section and try to set it to Actual Size or 100%.
- If you don't want to re-print your zine, you can also generally get your layout/folding back to normal by just trimming off the blank margins that the printer added (Depending on your zine, it may be hard to tell where the extra margins are. Often they're around 0.5" though.)
- If changing the Scale settings didn't help, setting the Page Size as mentioned in #3 above might also help!That generally shouldn't affect the folding aspect, but it might place your page content a little off from where you want it.
- When you print, there's a white border around the edges & some of your content gets cut off.
- Most printers can't print all the way to the edge of the paper, so if you have a colored background or content going all the way to the edge, some of it might get cropped off.
- In this case, you might actually want to set the Scale in the printer settings to Scale to Fit or Fit Page (or something like that), or you could manually set the percentage to something like 90%.
- When you set it to fit to page, you are going to run into Problem #1 from above, where the folding/layout gets wonky--but don't worry! All you need to do is take a paper cutter and cut off the white/empty border. Once you trim the border, the layout & folding should all work again, and you'll just end up with a slightly tinier zine, but with content that can go right up to the edge!
Notes
- A very special thanks to Rowan Merewood for creating the tutorial "Create a printable zine with CSS", which was one of the main resources I relied on for getting started with this project.
- A second round of thanks to the developers of PDF.js, because I have no clue how to work with PDF's on my own.
- This project is Open Source under the MIT license! You can find the source code here: https://github.com/romadox/zine-arranger/tree/main
Status | Released |
Category | Tool |
Platforms | HTML5 |
Rating | Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars (27 total ratings) |
Author | Nash High |
Tags | Comics, Creative, zine |
Code license | MIT License |
Asset license | Creative Commons Attribution_ShareAlike v4.0 International |
Development log
- Source code moved to GitHubFeb 03, 2024
- ZineArranger 1.0 is out!Aug 04, 2022
- Quarter size prototype + dev plansJun 15, 2022
Comments
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Holy moly this tool is amazing! Thank you so much for making and sharing it!
Hi, this tool is amazing! I was wondering if you had any suggestions for if I want to glue a bunch of the 8th size zines together to make a longer booklet! I'm a bit confused about where to put blank pages in the pdf so I can glue the front and backs together. Thanks so much :)
Ooh, that's a really interesting concept / question! The bad news is the way Zine Arranger handles lots of pages is gonna make this especially tricky.
Right now whenever there's more than 1 sheet worth of pages, Zine Arranger sets things up so that each sheet nests into the middle of the previous -- so like for a minizine, you'd open the first sheet to the middle, lay the 2nd sheet in there and so on, and then staple the spine. But for gluing the 2nd sheet to the 1st sheet, you'd need a totally different page order...
It's a bit of a pain, but right now my best suggestion would be to separate each sheet into it's own 8-page PDF -- then you just have to make the first and/or last page blank, depending on where the sheet falls in the order.
It's good to know about this method of making a longer booklet, though! I'm glad you reached out. I added a note about it on my to-do list. Someday when I get a chance to add some features to this, I'll try to add in an option to have the pages arranged in a way that would work better for this--maybe where each 8 pages becomes 1 complete minizine, in order instead of expecting to be nested into each other.
Ah I see! Thanks for your help! Have a good one :)
I spent hours trying to figure out how to lay out my zine, then found this and got it done right away! thanks so much, this is such a great tool!
Yay! I'm so glad you found it helpful! It saves me a lot of time too haha
This tool is incredible! I've just made my first zine, and it saved me soooooo much time with figuring out the printing for a quarter zine.
Ahh, I'm so glad! I love hearing any time folks make their first zine, and it means a lot to hear that you found this helpful for that!
super helpful. thanks for making this!
this is awesome, exactly what I have been looking for
This is amazing! Thank you so much for making this tool ♡♡♡
you beautiful moonbeam!! ive been tirelessly searching for a tool to automate this process. thank you so much for making this.
Thank you!! I was in the same boat, searching all over for a tool to make this part easy. I'm glad others are finding it as handy as well!