Arrange multiple pages per sheet and export a new PDF from your document files in a few clicks.
N-up (also written "n-up" or "N-Up") is a print-prep technique that places multiple source pages onto each output sheet in a simple tiled grid. It is not booklet imposition — N-up tiles pages in their original order, while booklet imposition reorders pages so the booklet reads correctly after folding. Use N-up when you want fewer printed pages, not a folded book.
Need to shrink the file further after composing? Pair with Compress PDF. If you only need to combine separate PDFs into one document (not pack pages onto sheets), use Merge PDF instead. To break a long PDF into smaller files, see Split PDF.
How much each layout shrinks your content and what it is good for. Grids are shown for a portrait source document; the tool flips the sheet automatically when that fits your pages bigger.
| Layout | Grid | Sheet it lands on | Roughly each page becomes | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2-up | 2 x 1 | Landscape | ~65% linear | Drafts, two-page spreads, easier-to-read handouts | Almost always readable — the safe default |
| 4-up | 2 x 2 | Portrait | Slide handouts, lecture notes, study sheets | 10pt body text becomes roughly 5pt — borderline | |
| 6-up | 3 x 2 | Landscape | Slide thumbnails, quick reference | Body text is hard work; fine for images and large headings | |
| 8-up | 4 x 2 | Landscape | Dense slide packets, storyboards | Body text unreadable; recognisable shapes only | |
| 9-up | 3 x 3 | Portrait | Contact sheets, index sheets | Same — treat it as a visual index | |
| 16-up | 4 x 4 | Portrait | Proof sheets, thumbnail overviews | Text is decorative at this size |
A useful rule: the linear shrink factor is roughly 1/sqrt(N) once the sheet is oriented to suit the grid. So 4-up shrinks to ~50%, 9-up to ~33%, 16-up to ~25%. Print designers commonly cite 10pt as the practical minimum for body text, which means anything denser than 4-up will push 10pt source text below the readability threshold.
These are routinely confused. The right tool depends on whether you want to fold the output into a book.
| Property | N-Up (this tool) | Booklet Imposition |
|---|---|---|
| Page order on the sheet | Sequential (1,2 then 3,4 then 5,6) | Reordered (e.g. for 8 pages: 8/1 outside, 2/7 inside, etc.) |
| Output meant to be | Read flat as a tiled sheet | Folded in half, stapled, read as a booklet |
| Required page count | Any number of source pages | Must be a multiple of 4 (each folded sheet = 4 booklet pages) |
| Typical use | Handouts, drafts, contact sheets, paper saving | Saddle-stitched zines, programs, brochures |
| Reading flow when folded | Pages out of order | Pages in natural reading order |
| Common N values | 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 16 (all six available here) | 2 pages per sheet face, 4 per sheet total |
If you fold a 2-up N-up sheet in half you will get pages 1 and 2 facing outward, then pages 3 and 4 — not 1, 2, 3, 4 in order. That is the signature problem booklet imposition solves; N-up does not solve it.
Exactly ceil(pages ÷ N). A 48-page PDF gives 24 sheets at 2-up, 12 at 4-up, 8 at 6-up, 6 at 9-up, and 3 at 16-up. Every page in your document lands on a sheet — nothing is trimmed off the end. When the page count isn't a clean multiple of N, the final sheet is simply partly filled: 5 pages at 4-up gives one full sheet and one sheet holding a single page. The panel shows the arithmetic live ("5 pages → 2 sheets") and the empty slots on the last sheet appear as dashed outlines in the preview, so you can see the sheet is short rather than wonder whether pages went missing.
No. N-up tiles pages onto a sheet in their original order — page 1, then 2, then 3, then 4 — so a 2-up sheet reads left to right as pages 1 and 2. Booklet imposition reorders pages so that when the sheet is folded in half and stacked with others, the pages read in natural order. For a saddle-stitched booklet of 8 pages, the printer pairs pages 8/1, 2/7, 6/3, and 4/5 on the sheets. This page does N-up only; if you need booklet imposition, look for a dedicated booklet/saddle-stitch tool.
The same page size your source uses, re-oriented to suit the grid. A4 in gives A4 out; Letter in gives Letter out. What can change is the orientation of the sheet: with Sheet orientation set to Auto, 2-up, 6-up and 8-up land on a landscape sheet (because that fits your pages bigger) while 4-up, 9-up and 16-up land on a portrait one. Force Portrait or Landscape if you want a specific tray. Tiling onto a larger sheet — say eight A4 pages onto an A1 press sheet — is a print-shop imposition job and isn't something this tool does; it stays within your document's own paper size, which is what home and office printers want.
It depends on the original. A document with 10pt body text shrinks to roughly 5pt at 4-up — that is below the commonly cited 9-10pt minimum for printed body text, so it becomes a strain to read. Slide decks usually survive 4-up well because slides use much larger fonts (often 20-30pt). For dense academic papers, contracts, or code listings, stick to 2-up, which only takes each page down to about 65%. At 6-up and beyond, expect body text to be readable only with effort or a magnifier; reserve those for images, slide thumbnails, or content where visual recognition matters more than reading. The panel tells you the exact figure for your document — "each page prints at about 50% of its original size" — as you change N.
Both are available. The default is row-first ("Across, then down"): a 4-up sheet reads pages 1-2 across the top row and pages 3-4 across the bottom row. Switch Page order to "Down, then across" for column-first (1 above 2 in the left column, 3 above 4 in the right column), which is what you want when the sheet will be cut apart and the stacks collated — the cut piles then come out in reading order. Standard printed-handout N-up is row-first, so leave it alone unless you are cutting.
In print and N-up imposition, "margin" is the blank border around the entire output sheet (the white edge between the paper edge and the printed area). "Gutter" is the blank space between the tiled pages themselves — the gap between page 1 and page 2 on a 2-up sheet. Gutters matter when you plan to cut the sheet apart (you want enough whitespace to absorb cutting tolerance) or fold it (the gutter sits at the fold). The Spacing control sets both at once: None puts the pages edge to edge, Small leaves about 1/8 inch, and Medium about 1/4 inch. Small is the default because most printers cannot print borderless and a little breathing room stops the outer pages being clipped by the printer's own hardware margin.
Yes — tick "Draw a border around each page" and a hairline frame is drawn around every tiled page. It is off by default because most handouts read better without it, but it is worth turning on for two jobs: cutting sheets apart (the line is your guide) and 6-up or denser layouts of text-heavy pages, where the frames stop the tiles visually running together.
Orientation sets the orientation of the output sheet, not of the source pages, and the grid follows it: the sheet's long side always takes the larger number of cells. If your source pages are portrait and you choose 2-up with a Landscape sheet, the two portrait pages sit side by side — the natural pairing, and what Auto picks for you. Choose 2-up with a Portrait sheet instead and the same two pages stack top and bottom, each taking half the sheet height. For 4-up, 9-up and 16-up the grid is square either way (2x2, 3x3, 4x4) and the difference is which dimension of the source page gets squeezed harder. Auto simply runs both options and keeps whichever prints your pages larger.
Yes. Select the pages you want in the page grid before opening the "Pages per sheet" panel — the layout runs against your selection rather than the whole document, and the pages you didn't select stay full size in their original position. That is how you keep a title page at full size and pack only the inner pages, or compress a single section. If nothing is selected, every page in the file is laid out.
Yes, in three ways. Change N (or orientation, order, spacing, borders) in the panel and the sheets are rebuilt from the same source pages — layouts never stack on top of each other, so you can try 2-up, then 4-up, then 16-up freely. Click "Remove" to split the sheets back into single pages. Or press Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on Mac) to undo, like any other action in the studio. Once you click Save, the result is downloaded as a new PDF and your working document is untouched.
Both are handled per page. If you rotated a page in the studio before laying out the document, it is tiled in that rotation and fitted to its cell in its rotated shape. If your document mixes portrait and landscape pages, each page is scaled independently to fit inside its own cell, so a landscape page in a portrait document lands whole rather than being cropped — it just leaves a little empty space above and below it. The sheet size itself comes from the first page on that sheet.
If your PDF has interactive form fields (text inputs, checkboxes, signatures), they survive the tiling visually but their click positions are based on the original page coordinates — they will not be interactive on the composed sheet. If you want the form values to show up as static text on the output, toggle "Flatten form fields on save" in the document settings panel before saving.
Yes, and they number the sheets rather than the original pages, which is what a printed handout wants: a 48-page document at 4-up numbers 1 to 12. Apply page numbers after you have chosen your layout — the numbering reads the current page list, so adding them first and then changing N means redoing them.