NestPrint is a direct download from nestprint.app, not a Mac App Store app. Open the disk image and drag NestPrint to your Applications folder. It is signed and notarized, so it opens without any Gatekeeper warning.

Trial. The first launch starts a 14-day trial with every feature enabled. A banner at the top of the window shows the days remaining and a Buy Now button. When the trial ends, the canvas is replaced by a screen with Buy Now and Enter License Key…; nothing you saved is lost.

Licence. After buying, choose NestPrint → Enter License Key…, paste the key, and click Activate. The key is checked on your Mac — no account, no internet connection needed — and stored in your keychain. Reinstalling NestPrint does not reset the trial or forget the licence.

Updates. NestPrint checks for updates on its own and offers them when they arrive. To check now, choose NestPrint → Check for Updates…. Click Install Update and NestPrint downloads, replaces itself and relaunches.

If you are on build 9 or earlier the in-app updater cannot install anything (a bug in those builds). You will see a Learn More button instead of Install Update; download the current version from nestprint.app once, and updates work from then on.

Preferences (NestPrint → Settings…, ⌘,) has one setting: the display unit, inches or millimetres. It changes every measurement you see and type; jobs are stored in inches either way, so switching never alters a layout.

The window has three parts: the Job Panel on the left (printer, roll or sheet, margins, nesting, alignment, colour, cut marks), the canvas in the middle, and the Image Info panel on the right (size, crop, DPI, sharpening, per-image options). The status bar shows the paper used, the number of disabled images, zoom, and the Print and Export buttons.

A typical job:

1. Choose your printer, then set the roll width or sheet size and the margins.

2. Add your images.

3. Nest them, or place them by hand.

4. Set cut marks.

5. Choose colour handling.

6. Print, or export a PDF, TIFF or JPEG.

Adding images. Use File ▸ Add Image… or the ADD IMAGE button. The Add Images panel lets you pick the files, a print size and how many copies of each (1–99) in one place. Tick Keep open for the next order to have the panel reopen after each Add, handy for one paper with several client orders at different sizes. Click Cancel to finish. You can also drag files onto the canvas. NestPrint reads TIFF, JPEG, PNG, DNG and single-page PDF files. Images arrive at their native size unless you pick a print size.

Saving. Layouts save as .nestprint files and link to your original images. If a file has moved, NestPrint lists what is missing and offers to relink it.

Trial and licence. NestPrint runs free for 14 days. After that, enter your licence key (format XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX) to continue. The key is checked online once when you activate it, then works offline. One key covers up to three Macs.

Each job is a document window with the canvas in the middle, the Job Panel on the left, the Image Info panel on the right, and a status bar along the bottom.

Sheet presets include imperial sizes from 4×6 to 13×19″ and ISO A4 to A0, plus custom sheets.

Margins. Enter the top, bottom, left and right margins. The printable area is drawn on the canvas, and every nesting method keeps prints inside it. For the paper you chose, NestPrint also shades the printer’s own unprintable border on each side.

Units. In Preferences, choose Inches, Centimeters or Millimeters. Every field and ruler follows your choice, and standard print sizes list your unit’s own system first.

Zoom. Press ⌘= to zoom in, ⌘− to zoom out and ⌘0 to fit. You can also type a percentage in the status bar.

By default a roll is one continuous strip. Turn on Split into pages (Roll mode, Canvas section) and set a Page length(minimum 4″) to lay the job out as fixed-length pages instead. It prints as one job and the printer cuts after each page.

• Pages stack down the canvas with a cut line and a “Page 2 of 3” label. One extra dimmed page is always shown, so you can drag a print onto it.
• Better Fit and Fewer Cuts fill page 1 before opening page 2. Each page keeps its own margins.
• A print cannot straddle a page break. A dragged print lands on the page under its centre.
• A print taller than a page is set aside, and NestPrint tells you the page’s printable size.
• Locked prints keep their page and position when you re-nest.
• Snap to Grid runs from the top of the roll, so on later pages prints sit on the grid only when the page length is a multiple of the grid spacing.

Printing. Every page is the full page length. With Canon drivers, turn on No Spaces at Top or Bottom in the driver settings so the last page is trimmed. That setting also removes your top and bottom margins. For automatic cutting, leave the driver’s Automatic Cutting on and Banner Printing off. To print only some pages, use the Pages range in the print dialog. A job that fits on one page prints exactly like a continuous roll.

Exporting. Each page is exported as its own roll, whatever the Crop to content setting. PDF is one file with a page per roll page. TIFF and JPEG write one file per page, named _p1, _p2 and so on.

NestPrint never resizes or distorts a print on its own. Nesting only moves and rotates; the size is always yours to choose.

• Output Size. Pick a preset from the Output Size menu or right-click ▸ Resize to…: imperial (4×5 to 30×40″), ISO A5–A0, metric (10×15 to 60×90 cm) or a saved custom size. You can choose a size before any image is on the canvas.
• Exact size. Type a width or height in the Image Info panel. The aspect ratio stays locked.
• Handles. Drag a corner to resize. Hold Shift to scale freely.
• Crop. If a size has a different shape from the image, the crop sheet opens. Frame the part you want, or choose Fit Inside to keep the whole image slightly smaller on one side. The crop is saved with the layout and can be adjusted later.
• Rotate. Select a print and rotate 90° with ⌘[ or ⌘], or right-click.
• Too big for the paper. The overhang shows with the paper edge in red. Use Fit to Sheet or Fit to Roll Width to scale it onto the printable area.
• DPI badge. Every print shows its effective resolution, with a yellow warning below 150 DPI.
• Duplicate and lock. ⌘D makes a copy. Duplicate Multiple… makes up to 99 in one undoable step. Lock pins a print so neither nesting nor dragging moves it. Copy, Cut and Paste also work.

Choose a Nest Method from the Job Panel dropdown. It applies immediately, with no confirmation. All methods keep prints inside the printable area (paper minus margins) and leave a gutter between prints that you set. Disabled prints are left out.

Both packing methods try prints in both orientations. With mixed sizes, they also try each size turned a different way and keep the shortest result. For example, three 11×14 and five 8×10 prints on a 43.5″ width pack into 21.25″ of roll.

Re-nesting. Switch method at any time to try another layout. Press ⌘⇧N to nest with Fewer Cuts. Undo returns to the previous layout.

Prints that do not fit. A print wider than the printable area is placed below the layout, and NestPrint says how many did not fit and why.

Alignment controls how prints snap while you drag them. Pick one of three modes in the Job Panel.

Snapping and collision use each print’s cut lines, not just the image, so cut lines never overlap. A print dragged into a neighbour stops exactly one gutter away. Prints cannot overlap.

Grid spacing is a decimal field with a stepper, in your display unit.

Guides are lines you drag out of the top or left ruler.

• Drag from a ruler to create a guide. It lands on the finest tick visible at your zoom level.
• Drag a guide back onto the ruler to delete it.
• Double-click a guide to type an exact position.
• View ▸ Show Guides (⌘;) shows or hides them. Lock Guides (⌥⌘;) stops them moving. Clear Guides removes all.
• Guides snap prints only in Snap to Edges mode. They are saved with the layout, can be undone, and never print, export or affect nesting.

Disable a print to keep it on the canvas without printing it. A disabled print is ghosted and left out of printing, export, nesting and the paper-used figures. Re-enable it any time and it returns to its place.

• Select the print and use the Disable control in the Image Info panel, or right-click ▸ Disable.
• The status bar shows how many prints are disabled.
• The Disabled Images list in the Canvas menu lets you find and re-enable them.

Use it to hold back alternates, test a layout without a print, or park a client’s order you are not ready to run.

Sharpening is set per print in the Image Info panel, so a soft portrait and a detailed landscape can differ in one job. It is always available, with or without upscaling.

• Slider, 0–10. The default is 0 (off). It uses luminance-only sharpening, which avoids halos and colour fringes.
• Live before/after preview. The canvas updates as you move the slider, with a compare view of sharpened and unsharpened.
• Zoom to 100%. Differences are hard to see when the whole page is on screen. Use the 100% button to judge a print at full size.
• Suggested amount. When a print is below your printer’s native resolution, you can ask for a suggested level based on how much it is enlarged. It is never applied for you.
• Non-destructive. The amount is stored with the layout and applied when you print or export. Your original file is never changed.

Upscaling. Whenever a print is below the printer’s native resolution (600 PPI for Canon and HP, 720 PPI for Epson), NestPrint enlarges it with a high-quality Lanczos resample at print and export time. The DPI badge shows the effective resolution at the size you chose.

Cut marks help you trim prints by hand. They are drawn as vector lines when printing and in PDF export, never baked into the image. Choose the type in the Job Panel; the default is None.

Every type shares four controls:

Inward puts the line inside the offset; Outward puts it outside. Marks drawn outward are counted as part of the print’s footprint, so prints keep clear of each other.

Per-image override. Marks apply to every print by default. To give one print different marks, change them in its Image Info panel. Printed lines are aligned to the printer’s pixel grid, so thin lines print at the same weight wherever they sit.

Choose who converts colour for the print. Only one of them should, or colours shift twice.

In Application Manages Color you also choose:

• Output profile from the profiles installed on your Mac.
• Rendering intent: Perceptual (default), Relative Colorimetric, Absolute Colorimetric or Saturation.
• Black Point Compensation, on by default and available with Relative Colorimetric only. It follows Photoshop’s method.

Each image is converted from its own embedded profile, so an Adobe RGB TIFF and an sRGB JPEG on one canvas both come out right. An image with no profile is treated as sRGB.

Profiling runs. To print a profiling target, stay in Printer Manages Color and set the driver itself to no colour correction (on Canon: Color Matching to Canon Color Matching, then Rendering Intent to No Color Correction).

AirPrint printers. A printer added as AirPrint cannot turn off its own colour conversion or control roll feed and cutting, so NestPrint warns before printing. Install the manufacturer’s driver for best results. Application Manages Color is unavailable on an AirPrint queue.

Printing. Choose your printer at the top of the Job Panel, then click Print. NestPrint sends the job to the printer’s installed driver and opens the driver’s own print dialog for quality, media type and other settings. Before printing it checks that the canvas fits the printer’s maximum width, that your source files are finished saving and unchanged, and whether the queue is AirPrint. In Sheet mode it selects the driver’s Cut Sheet paper for you.

Exporting. Click Export and choose PDF, TIFF or JPEG. Before saving you pick:

Color is converted to the chosen space, not just tagged, and the profile is embedded. PDF cut marks stay vector lines. Files are named with the job name, date and roll width. With pages on, each page is exported as its own roll (see Pages).

Warnings you may see:

Tips

• Set the print size before you add images. A size picked in Output Size applies to everything you add afterwards.

• Try Better Fit and Fewer Cuts on the same job and compare the paper used in the status bar.

• If a print will not move, check whether it is locked.

• If you edit an image in Photoshop, return to NestPrint. It re-reads the file automatically.

• If the trial has ended, enter your key from the purchase email under the licence prompt. For help, write to the support address on nestprint.app.