Printing to desktop printer

[buntonn]

Hi I am new to InDesign and have version 3.0. I want to design a product brochure for my wifes business and this will be a good learning tool for me. What I want to know is can you print work from InDesign to desktop printers which look good, or is it for draft only?

Thanks,
Nick

[grnofslt]

I've made a few brochures for where I used to attend church. InDesign 3 will print to inkjet printers and the quality will be as good as your printer. Now if you need to print a back up, that is on both sides of the paper you may just find that you can't impose side "a" perfectly with side "b" of your spread. that isn't because of INDesign, but rather it is caused by the lack of precision on how the ink jet printer picks up the paper. From all that I can figure out, the major cause of this is the area where the inkjets are allowed to print by their programs. Illustrator used to show the printer's printable area on the spread(pasteboard) so that you would be able to place what you wanted to print in a place where it will all be printer. I have an old Epson SC3000 which is a post script capable ink jet printer capable of printing 19 X 23 inch sheets or a 19 X 44 banners and i had problems getting impositions to line up. I hope that I didn't discourage you, for you might be able to do just what she needs. I hope that this will help you though

Billy jay

[buntonn]

Billy,

Thank you for your reply, you haven't put me off and I understand what you are saying. I will give it a go over the weekend and see how I get on.

Thanks,
Nick

[GuyB]

As far as quality goes, it's like Billy said : it will be as good as your desktop printer can give with the problems related with printing the back sides.

The other problem will be with imposition. You'll need either a script or a dedicated software. You can get such a script online (at Adobe Studio Exchange, for one) but these scripts are limited, mainly if you have objects crossing the spine of the spreads. On the other side, you'll have to evaluate if the cost of a dedicated imposition software is worthed for you. If you go to a professionnal printer, they will make the imposition for you.

If it's not too long or too complex, you can still try to design your brochure like if they were printer's spreads... but this can become quite complicated if it's a long document and if you have objects crossing the spine of the spreads.