In printing, 2-up, 3-up, or more generally N-up, is a
page layout
In graphic design, page layout is the arrangement of visual elements on a page. It generally involves organizational principles of composition to achieve specific communication objectives.
The high-level page layout involves deciding on the ...
strategy in which multiple pre-rendered pages are
composited onto a single page; achieved by reduction in size, possible rotations, and subsequent arrangement in a grid pattern. The primary purpose of N-up printing is to reduce the number of pages that a printed work would otherwise require without having to re-edit, index, or flow the layout of the individual pages of an existing work.
N-up printing should not be confused with
multiple column layout or the pre-press
imposition
Imposition is one of the fundamental steps in the prepress printing process. It consists of the arrangement of the printed product’s pages on the printer’s sheet, in order to obtain faster printing, simplify binding and reduce paper waste. ...
process.
The general availability of N-up printing in computerized output was stimulated with the introduction of page layout languages such as
PostScript
PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Do ...
, and later
PDF
Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
, which made such page compositions very easy; as exemplified by the ''GNU
Enscript
enscript is the name of a computer program originally written by Adobe in the late 1980s that converts text files to PostScript for printing. It has been re-implemented by many parties, including GNU and SPARC.
The GNU version is released un ...
'' program
as early as 1995.
The
Compact Oxford English Dictionary is notable for using N-up printing as a means to physically compress the large multi-volume dictionary into a much smaller and thus more accessible work. The first Compact OED edition of 1971 used a 4-up layout (4 original pages per resulting page); while the second edition of 1991 used a 9-up format, giving a total of 18 original pages being visible when the book is opened so both the recto and verso pages are displayed. The 9-up format, especially considering each original page used a 3-column layout, required such a reduction in font size that it necessitated the use of a magnifying lens to be legible.
See also
*
Duplex printing
Duplex printing is a feature of some computer printers and multi-function printers (MFPs) that allows the printing of a sheet of paper on both sides automatically. Print devices without this capability can only print on a single side of paper, s ...
References
{{Reflist
Printing terminology