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Orpheus

Put several PDF pages on one sheet

Two, four or sixteen up — a handout, or a contact sheet.

Every tool runs entirely in your browser. Your files are never uploaded to a server.

Each sheet receives a grid of scaled-down pages. The arrangement is picked by testing every grid on both paper orientations and keeping whichever lets the pages come out largest, so two-up lands on landscape and four-up on portrait.

How to use PDF Pages Per Sheet

  1. Add your PDF. Drag it in or click to browse.
  2. Choose how many per sheet. Two for a side-by-side read, four for a handout, sixteen for a contact sheet.
  3. Set the spacing. A margin around the sheet, a gap between pages, and an optional outline.

About placing several PDF pages on one sheet

Placing several pages on one sheet is what a print dialog calls "pages per sheet" and what a typesetting toolchain calls n-up. The use cases are distinct enough to be worth naming: two-up turns a document into a facing-page read or halves the paper for a long report; four and six-up produce the handout format used for slides; nine and sixteen-up make a contact sheet, which is the fastest way to find one page in a long scan. The decision that matters is the grid, and it is worth calculating rather than fixing. A slot count can usually be arranged more than one way — six can be two across by three down or three by two — and each arrangement can go on portrait or landscape paper, giving several candidates whose results differ substantially. Testing all of them and keeping whichever lets the source pages come out largest means the sensible answer falls out on its own: two portrait pages land side by side on a landscape sheet, four land two by two on a portrait one, and neither has to be special-cased. The grid is decided once from the first page and then held for the whole document, so a file whose pages vary in size keeps a consistent sheet rather than reflowing halfway through, while each page is still scaled into its own slot so an odd one out is letterboxed rather than stretched. Nothing is rasterised at any point, so text stays selectable and searchable.

Frequently asked questions

Why does two-up come out landscape and four-up portrait?
Because that is the arrangement that wastes least paper, and it is calculated rather than assumed. Every grid is tried on both paper orientations, and whichever lets the pages come out largest wins — which for two portrait pages is a landscape sheet, and for four is a portrait one.
What happens to the pages that do not fill the last sheet?
The last sheet is partly empty, and the pages on it keep the same size as everywhere else. Rescaling them to fill the space would make the final sheet visibly different from the rest, which is worse than white space on a handout.
Is the text still selectable afterwards?
Yes. Each page is embedded as vector content and scaled, not rasterised, so text remains selectable and searchable and stays sharp when printed. What changes is the size it is printed at, which is the whole point.
Does it handle pages my scanner rotated?
Yes. A PDF page stores its rotation separately from its content, and that rotation is reapplied when the page is placed, so a landscape sheet scanned as a rotated portrait page lands the right way up in its slot rather than sideways.
Can I just print two pages per sheet instead?
Often, yes — most print dialogs offer it. Making the file is useful when you need to send the handout rather than print it, when the recipient will print it themselves, or when you want the margins and spacing under your control rather than the driver default.

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