Changing Print Layouts Landscape to Portrait

[Egg Bramhill]

Hi Billy and welcome to Talk Graphics. You do seem to be confusing the subject far more than is required. I suggest before you start to create your template you decide whether you need them in portrait or landscape orientation.

What gives with all this swapping orientation?

If you're going to make tickets two abreast in either portrait or landscape then they are obviously going to be of two different widths. The widths of a portrait ticket are going to be less than a landscape image. Do you require greater width for the tickets than can be produced on portrait mode? Then use landscape mode. Following me so far?

Having decided which orientation you wish to use, stick to it. Create your template within that mode.

Finally Save and Export your Xara template as a pdf.

The pdf will print in whatever orientation it was created in without the need to change your printer settings..

[teknobilly]

Thanks Egg,
I think you missed the part where I mentioned that the layout is the same in either portrait or landscape. The problem is that I have a nasty tendency to visualize graphics with a level orientation. I found that rather than rotating the page, I can turn my laptop on it's side and work on the graphics in that manner. This make using the mouse much more awkward, but I'm getting used to it. :P

The real problem is each ticket or area is customized, working in portrait mode is awkward to manage all the bits and pieces. I prefer turning the page on it's side in landscape mode.

As for printing, every print driver is different, and there are many applications interpreting PDFs with different results. I have wasted many frustrating hours trying to get a landscape orientated file to print properly. A burden I don't want to pass onto my customers. So I like to send PDFs out in portrait, and request they use Adobe Acrobat to view/ print the files.

[Albacore]

In the "page options" which is in the File Menu you have a "Custom Page Size" make that page size to your landscape ticket size. You can lock that page size so that every extra page will be the same size giving you the option of making each ticket different. You can also make your basic design a "Live Copy" which will make your life easier and stop this standing on your head/turning laptop. Here is a copy of part of the Help file: Live Copies give you a way of having multiple copies of an object that are linked together so that if one copy is changed they all change. However each Live Copy can be transformed independently, so for example you could have larger and smaller versions of the same Live Copy, or perhaps copies with different rotations.

Once you have all of your designs done start a new doc in A4 portrait put in your guides/grid. For tickets I use rectangle drawn in the guide layer and drag + right click with the mouse to duplicate till your sheet is full. With this done open your ticket design file and Ctrl+C each page design into your Guide/template doc. and do a quick rotation of -90 degrees. Doing this way only really stops you rotating your laptop. If your going to be doing a huge amount of these cards I would seriously think about using a DTP programme and if it is just changing text in each of the cards/tickets you could import a CVS file into the programme to a field where you want the text to change. Hope that helps your problem!

[teknobilly]

Oh wow, you're blowing my mind!

Thank you this sounds exactly like what I'm looking for. I'll give a good whirl and report back.

Thanks a bunch.

[Egg Bramhill]

Try messing about with this xar file. It uses Live Copies as Peter (Albacore) suggests.

[teknobilly]

Yeah! Great demo Mr Egg.

My experience was very similar, and it saved me some work already. I created a system very much like your demo, and created the latest batch of flash cards for my wife. Then she tweaked the design... expecting a big sigh, instead she got "no problem", showed her how to apply the change to the template and instantly a a dozen pages of flash cards were updated. Fantastic!

I did mess one batch of flash cards up, for the various grades there is a different file for each. On the second or third file, I copied a page in, and then whenever I needed a new page I pasted in another page. The live copies were not linked. I found that after I copy a page with live copies on it, I need to copy that new page, before pasting in additional copies.

Very cool.
Thanks again Fin, Albacore, and Egg
Billy

[Egg Bramhill]

Glad to hear you've got it sorted. I don't copy pages, I just select the page in the P&L Gallery and hit the duplicate button. This does copy the live copies across.