Two ways to fold a book. One needs scissors and one doesn't, and the difference decides which designs you can actually make.
A folded book is made of vertical strips — one sheet of paper is one thin column of the finished picture. Fold the top corner back and the bottom corner back, and what stays sticking out is a single band of paper. That band is the only mark that sheet can make.
MMF — measure, mark, fold — works entirely within that limit. Two measurements per sheet, no cutting, and every mistake is recoverable because paper unfolds. It's how most people learn book folding and it handles the great majority of designs.
The limit bites when a vertical line through your design crosses two or more dark areas. Think of a ring: near its middle, a vertical line passes through the top of the ring, then the hole, then the bottom. One sheet, two bands wanted, one band possible. MMF has to drop one — and across the whole book that turns a clean ring into a dashed ghost of one.
Cut & Fold removes the limit by cutting in from the outer edge at each band boundary. Now the sheet is in sections, and each section folds independently. On a ring at 300 pages that's the difference between showing about two-thirds of the design and showing all of it.
A strip that touches the top or bottom of the sheet doesn't need a cut at all — the paper beyond it is still attached to an edge, so it creases back the ordinary way. Only the boundaries between strips have to be cut free. Mixing the two on the same sheet is what the craft calls a combi fold, and this generator does it by default: a ring in a 300-page book comes out at 152 cuts rather than the 436 you'd make by cutting every boundary. Sheets wanting a single strip get no cuts whatsoever — they're plain folds.
Both of these are outlines, so neither can be made as a plain fold — they are the reason this mode exists. Built for a 300-page book about 20 cm tall; for any other book, run the artwork through the generator instead.
| MMF (fold only) | Cut & Fold | |
|---|---|---|
| Tools | A ruler. Nothing else. | A ruler, plus scissors or a craft knife. |
| Marks per sheet | Two — a top and a bottom. | Two per strip, so four or six on a busy sheet. |
| What one sheet can show | One strip. That's the hard limit. | As many strips as the design needs. |
| Solid shapes (heart, cross, a name) | Ideal. No reason to cut. | Works, but you're cutting for nothing. |
| Hollow shapes (outlines, rings, line art) | Comes out as dashed lines. | Comes out whole. |
| Cuts on a single-strip sheet | None — there's nothing to cut. | Also none. Those sheets fold plainly (see combi, above). |
| Time for a 300-page book | An evening or two. | Roughly double, and slower to start. |
| Recoverable mistakes | Yes — unfold and refold. | No. A cut is permanent. |
Don't cut a solid shape. If every sheet only wants one strip anyway, cutting adds hours and risk and changes nothing about the result. The generator tells you which case you're in before you start.
Upload your artwork and it simulates the fold at a range of page counts, then counts how many dark areas a vertical line crosses. If that number is one, MMF is all you need and it says so. If it's two or more, it tells you what a plain fold will lose and offers to switch — you don't have to know any of this beforehand.
Upload and generate
Enter your book's real page range and height, then generate as normal. This produces an MMF pattern.
Read the Book Fit Check
If your artwork is hollow, it says so, and explains what will come out dashed.
Switch to Cut & Fold
One click regenerates the same artwork as a cut pattern. You can switch back at any time.
Download the guide
The Cut & Fold PDF lists, for every sheet, where to cut and which sections to fold back.
Cut about 2–3 cm deep
Just past where the fold will sit. Deeper weakens the sheet and starts showing at the spine; shallower and the folded section won't lie flat.
Cut one sheet at a time
Stacking to save time is the most common way people ruin a book — the sheets shift and the cuts drift out of line down the stack.
Scissors beat a knife for most people
A knife is faster and neater if you already use one. If you don't, small sharp scissors are far more forgiving and don't need a cutting mat.
Mark everything before you cut anything
Work through a batch of sheets with a pencil first. Switching between measuring and cutting is where mistakes get made, and cuts don't undo.