Is there an easy way to get my computer/printer to do booklet imposition? I'm getting into bookbinding, and I'd like to make my own sewn signatures, but I'm having problems with finding a good way to use my computer and printer to print out pages so that I can simply fold them in half and sew them into book signatures.  With double-sided printing, this often requires that pages be rotated between the front/back pages on the leaf, and that pages be printed in a stair-step order, so that 1 and 16 are side by side, 2 and 15, and so on and so on, if I'm making four-sheet signatures of 16 pages, folded and sewn down the middle.

Is there any way to get my computer/printer to print out pages for single-fold and double-fold signatures easily?  I have a laser printer that can handle duplex printing, and I do have the full Pro version of Acrobat, and an InDesign license, but it's an old one, and I don't have any imposition plug-ins.
I looked into this years ago when I was printing out some books to test my leather binding skills. Back then you likely would have used dedicated software to perform this function.

Software has changed since then and Adobe Reader DC does this as well as InDesign from what I gather. Depending on your Acrobat version it should be able to do this well. In short form: the instructions from Adobe Reader DC


In the printer dialog select Booklet. This is found under Page Sizing and handling.





In the Booklet Subset pop-up menu select "Both sides" if you have duplex printer.
Leave the numbers in the Sheets From boxes as they are.
Select Auto-Rotate Pages to automatically rotate each page for the best fit in the printable area.


InDesign has instructions to do this as well. That link is for CS6 and other versions might have similar UI or more specific instructions sets. The Indesign wizard for booklets is more in depth than Reader DC's and covers topic like bleeding, page spacing, magins etc.



Another possible solution is that many modern enterprise copy machines do this natively with their drivers. A place like a copy center likely would do it on the cheap. My old Ricoh at work does this function. It is about 6 years old now and was not top of the line at the time. This might be cheaper depending on your ink/toner costs and size of the book you are making