What N-Up does
N-Up places several pages of a PDF onto one sheet — 2, 4, 6 or 9 per page — scaled down and arranged in a grid. It is the “multiple pages per sheet” option from a print dialog, but saved as a new PDF you can share, print anywhere, or read on a tablet. Slide decks become handouts, long reports become proof sheets, and a 40-page document prints on 10 sheets. The layout is done by placing the original page objects onto new pages, so text remains sharp and selectable; nothing is rasterized. Everything runs in your browser.
Layout options
| Option | Grid | Each page scaled to | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2-up | 2 × 1 (side by side on landscape) | ≈ 70% | Two portrait pages per landscape sheet — booklets, reading side by side |
| 4-up | 2 × 2 | ≈ 50% | Slide handouts, review copies, saving paper |
| 6-up | 3 × 2 | ≈ 33% | Slide handouts with room for notes, thumbnails |
| 9-up | 3 × 3 | ≈ 33% | Proof sheets, storyboard overviews, contact sheets |
Pages are placed in reading order — left to right, then top to bottom. The output page keeps the original page size, so a 4-up of A4 slides is an A4 sheet with four quarter-size slides. The remaining space on a partly filled last sheet is left blank.
How the scaling works
Cell width = sheet width ÷ columns
Cell height = sheet height ÷ rows
Scale = min(cell width ÷ page width, cell height ÷ page height)
4-up of A4 portrait pages onto an A4 portrait sheet:
cell = 297 × 421 pt, page = 595 × 842 pt → scale = 0.5Each page is scaled uniformly to fit its cell without distortion and centred within it. Landscape slides on a portrait sheet leave some vertical white space in 4-up and 6-up, which is where handout note lines traditionally go.
Common uses
- Presentation handouts — 4-up or 6-up of a slide deck for the audience.
- Proofreading — 2-up to compare facing pages, or 9-up to check layout consistency across a document at a glance.
- Saving paper — printing reference material at 2-up or 4-up.
- Storyboards and thumbnails — 9-up contact sheets of a comic, a photo book or a UI flow.
- Flashcards and labels — a single-page design repeated by merging copies first, then laid out N-up.
- Reading on a tablet — 2-up of a small-format book to mimic the open-book view.
Tips
- Small text at 9-up is about a third of its original size — fine for overview, too small to read. Use 4-up for anything that must be legible.
- For a booklet you fold in half, you need imposition (pages ordered 8-1, 2-7, …), not plain 2-up. Print dialogs with a “booklet” option handle that.
- Rotate landscape slides to portrait first if you want them stacked vertically at 2-up.
- To leave the last sheet full, delete or duplicate pages so the page count is a multiple of N.