Visit the official website for jpdftweak to download the software. jpdftweak is a free imposition software written in Java, so it should work on Windows as well as Linux.

Here are a few tips to get you started once you run the software.

Open jpdftweak, and you should see a window displaying multiple tabs. (Tabs not mentioned below may be ignored.)

Use the Select… button at the right of the Filename input field to select your input PDF.

If you are selecting multiple files, be sure to check the Multiple file input checkbox to the left under the Filename input field.

Note: You can make adjustments here as necessary. Most commonly, you might want to adjust the From Page and To Page range.

Check the Scale pages box, and choose a page size that corresponds to your final paper size when printed.

• Check the Shuffle pages box in the upper left of the window.
• Select the paper size in the drop-down menu on the upper right of the window.
• Set the config string:
  • If what you want to do is already in the Preset menu, just select it.
    • For example, if you are making a simple stapled booklet from A5 pages to print on A4 paper, just select Booklet Portrait.
  • More complicated configurations that are not in the Preset menu will have to be coded.
    • To start with, check to see if what you need is already in our jpdftweak Templates collection.
    • If not, it is usually best to choose a preset that is the closest to what you want and then modify it using the data table in the window.
    • Consider contributing your config string to the jpdftweak section in our jpdftweak Templates collection if you think it might be useful to others. Just be sure to leave a clear explanation with your config string.

It is very important that you choose a filename that is different from your original filename for your output file; otherwise, your original file will be overwritten.

I like to select the filename by clicking the … button to the right of the filename field, and then appending something like “booklet” to the filename.

Double-check the settings if you feel like you need to. Then click the Run button in the lower right of the window. A message should appear shortly declaring success to your endeavor.

This procedure will vary in Linux depending on the window manager you are using.