# two pages on one and exact crop marks

the page size of my document is A5 and has about 100 pages.

For printing I need to put two pages on one in A4 and rearrange them in a specific way due to my thumb index at eachside of the page.

That's the code I got so far:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{pdfpages}
\usepackage{forloop}

\begin{document}

\pagestyle{plain}
\newcounter{i}
\newcounter{p}
\newcounter{pp}
\newcounter{ppp}
\newcounter{pppp}

\forloop{i}{1}{\value{i} < 34}{%
\setcounter{p}{\thei*4+2}
\setcounter{pp}{\thei*4-1}
\setcounter{ppp}{\thei*4}
\setcounter{pppp}{\thei*4+1}

\includepdfmerge[nup=1x2, landscape]{file.pdf, \thep,\thepp,\theppp,\thepppp}%
}

\end{document}


I'd like to add crop marks like this:

3mm margin for printing area and 3mm crop marks.

Instead of the option a5paper you can use any setting for your paper dimension. The package crop allows several crop marks, see documentation (run texdoc crop),. You can adopt this solution for using pdfpages and two on one.

\documentclass[twoside]{article}
\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{a5paper}
\usepackage[center,a4,cross]{crop}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\begin{document}
\Blinddocument


\end{document}

• that didn't answer my question. I didn't want to have such big crop marks. Just 3mm like in my solution; besides it doesn't have x-shaped marks – Moldevort May 5 '14 at 7:57

Had finally an idea over night and solved it:

\documentclass[twoside,landscape]{scrreprt}
\usepackage{forloop}
\usepackage{pdfpages}
\usepackage{background}
\usetikzlibrary{calc}
\usepackage[a4paper]{geometry}
\geometry{top=6mm, left=6mm, right=0mm, bottom=0mm}

\backgroundsetup{
scale=1,
opacity=1,
angle=0,
color=black,
contents={%
\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]
\draw[thick] ($(current page.north west)+(0mm,-9mm)$) -- ++(\paperwidth,0mm); %o
\draw[thick] ($(current page.south west)+(0mm,9mm)$) -- ++(\paperwidth,0mm); %u
\draw[thick] ($(current page.north east)+(-9mm,0mm)$) -- ++(0,-\paperheight); %r
\draw[thick] ($(current page.north west)+(9mm,0mm)$) -- ++(0,-\paperheight); %l
\draw[thick] ($(current page.north)+(0mm,0mm)$) -- ++(0,-\paperheight); %m
\end{tikzpicture}%
}}

\newcommand{\ing}[1]{\includegraphics[width=(\textwidth-6mm)/2,height=\textheight-6mm,page=#1]{empty}}

\newcommand{\pdf}[4]{
\hspace*{-11pt}%
\ing{\numexpr#1\relax}%
\ing{\numexpr#2\relax}%
\clearpage%
\hspace*{6pt}%
\ing{\numexpr#3\relax}%
\ing{\numexpr#4\relax}%
\clearpage%
}

\pagestyle{plain}
\newcounter{i}
\begin{document}

%%% Cover
\pdf{1}{3}{3}{3}

%%% Inhalt
\forloop{i}{1}{\value{i} < 34}{%
\pdf{\thei*4+2}{\thei*4-1}{\thei*4}{\thei*4+1}
}

%%% letzte 3 Seiten
\pdf{3}{137}{138}{139}

\null\clearpage

\end{document}