Placement

The Placement section controls how your source pages are positioned on the printed sheet. You can set output margins, scale content, choose its alignment, and control bleed behaviour. These settings apply to the pages currently selected in the page strip, and each box has a link control so you can share or override settings per page.

This is probably the part of Octavo you’ll spend most of your time in, as it is in Placement that you can position things perfectly to get them looking good.

The Document View

In Placement, the document view has two modes:

• Preview, which shows you pages or spreads as the reader will see them
• Imposition, which shows what the precise printed output will look like.

You can make edits in either mode.

The Show bleed checkbox toggles showing the bleed area.

Understanding Octavo’s Placement Model

If you are confused by the difference between source margins, placement margins, printer margins, trim area, bleed area, and more: read Placement and Margins, which explains Octavo’s placement model.

Settings

Media

A dropdown that lets you choose which media type (defined on the Media tab) to use for the selected pages. This determines which paper the pages will print on.

Placement Margins

A visual margin editor for the space between the edge of the placement area and the edge of the trimmed output page. The four sides are labelled Top, Bottom, Inside, and Outside — inside and outside swap automatically depending on whether the page is a left or right page.

Content Scaling

Mode

Choose how Octavo scales your source content to fit the output area:

• Fit (calculate per page) — Each page is scaled independently to fit its output area as well as possible.
• Fit (consistent scale) — All pages use the same scale factor, calculated from the page that needs the most reduction. This keeps text and images at a uniform size across pages.
• Manual — You set the scale yourself using the control below.

The two “fit” options are identical if all your pages are the same size and have the same source margins. It’s only when the sizes are disperate that it makes a difference.

Scale

A slider and percentage field for setting the scale factor. Only visible when Mode is set to Manual.

Content Position

A 3×3 grid that controls where content is placed within the placement area. The columns are Inner, Centre, and Outer; the rows are Top, Centre, and Bottom. Inner and outer correspond to the binding edge and the open edge of the page, respectively.

This only has an effect if your source is smaller than the placement area, as per the placement controls above.

Content Bleed

Controls how source content is allowed to extend beyond the output margins. Choose from:

• Enabled — Content can bleed beyond the margins in all directions.
• Beyond margins when touching — Content bleeds outside the placement margin only on edges where it extends all the way to the placement margin.
• Only up to margins — Content can bleed outside the source margins but is stopped at the placement margins.
• Off — Bleed is completely disabled.

Bleed will only happen if the relevant source page has bleed enabled in the Source Page tab, as well as having content bleed enabled here.

In Octavo, you can use bleed in a few different ways — it’s not just for content that crosses the trim boundary. See Bleed for more.