PSBOOK(1)

🦋 psbook(1) — signatures, but make it cute 🦋

okay so bestie, welcome to the psbook(1) manual page — it's a User Commands situation, and it's literally about turning PDF/PostScript pages into book signatures. iconic behavior, no cap.

🌸 NAME 🌸

psbook — the signature-making page rearranger, periodt.

📜 SYNOPSIS 📜

psbook [OPTION...] [INFILE [OUTFILE]]

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

psbook uses pstops to rearrange pages from a PDF or PostScript document into ‘signatures’ for printing books or booklets, creating a new file. A ‘signature’, often called a ‘section’ in bookbinding, is a series of sheets that are folded together to be stitched into the book's binding. Each sheet has two pages per side; the number of pages in a signature must therefore be a multiple of four. Extra blank sides will be added if the file does not contain a multiple of four pages.

The output should be printed 2-up (this can be achieved with psnup(1)) and duplex, as for short-edge binding. Alternatively, the output of psnup can be passed through the following command:

pstops '2:0(0,0),1U(1w,1h)'

to rotate the verso page upside-down, and the result can be printed duplex as for long-edge binding. Rearrange pages in a PDF or PostScript document into signatures.

• INFILE — - or no INFILE argument means standard input
• OUTFILE — - or no OUTFILE argument means standard output

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -s SIGNATURE, --signature SIGNATURE — number of pages per signature; 0 = all pages in one signature [default]; 1 = do not rearrange the pages; otherwise, a multiple of 4
• -v, --version — show program's version number and exit
• -q, --quiet — don't show progress

💬 COMMENTS 💬

PAGES is a comma-separated list of pages and page ranges; see pstops(1) for more details.

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org> — yes bestie, that's the author.

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mwah 💋 — this page comes from psutils 3.3.17 and is dated 2026-09-08. slay.