printing with bleeds final print product

PRINTING WITH BLEEDS FINAL PRINT PRODUCT HOW TO

This gives the cutter a buffer, or margin of error, to trim the paper down with a nice clean edge of stripes.įig 3 above illustrates the process of cutting.

Image on the right illustrates the flag stripes extended into the yellow bleed area. No printer in the world can accomplish this feat. There is zero margin of error for the cutter to make this cut perfectly along the right edge of the stripes. It does not overflow onto the yellow border, the bleed area. On the left, the flags red and white stripes are right at the edge of the finished product size.

PRINTING WITH BLEEDS FINAL PRINT PRODUCT HOW TO

The yellow border is the “tape”.įig 2 above illustrates how to apply graphics for bleed. Image on right shows the bleed space as the yellow outer border. Middle image is the expanded document once bleed margins have been added.

Image on left is the actual finished product size. When you do this, the document size will be 8.75″ x 11.25″.

This is the standard US LETTER size.Īll you need to do is add 1/8″ (.125″) to each of the four sides of the document. Let’s take a common flyer size of 8.5″ x 11″ for example. A printer may only require a minimum 1/16″ bleed but if you submit a file with 1/2″ bleeds, the printer should not reject your file. Technically, you can add as much bleed as you want but for obvious reasons there is no need to go more than 1/4″ even for most jobs. Be sure to verify with each printer you work with. That said, certain products such as booklets or large format may require more bleed and certain printers may require different settings. This should be enough for majority of the products offered by printers. The basic rule is to add a minimum 1/8″ to each of the sides for most basic print jobs. You are simply making the document size a little bit larger than the finished product size, allowing space to extend graphics, text, or backgrounds beyond the trim line, aka, cut line. Bleed setup is only required if anything other than white space touches the edge. Let me step back and note if your design layout has a white background with no graphics or text of any kind touching the edges, you do not need a bleed setup. You are extending graphics that touch the edge of the finished printed piece beyond the cut or trim line so that when it reaches the cutting department, the cutting operator can trim off the excess graphics to create a perfect flush edge. In printing, the bleed space, or margin, acts like the tape.

A bleed in printing is essentially the same principle as painters tape. Painters apply masking style tape along edges to be painted over to make clean straight lines, or when two different colors meet on that straight line. Tape provides a buffer so that paint can be applied overlapping onto the tape, then peeled away to reveal a perfect flush edge of paint. We’ve used the painters tape analogy at ULTRA™ for several years to explain what bleeds are and found this analogy to make the most sense with clients. One of the best analogies to illustrate what bleeds are is to compare it to painters using tape to create straight lines. Without proper bleed setup you run the chance of white space between the edge and graphics. This bleed space of extended artwork gives printers extra area of artwork to be cutoff creating a perfect flush edge of ink. We’ll explain what bleeds are without using technical printer jargon nobody outside the industry will understand and break down in detail how to set up bleeds in Illustrator and Photoshop.Ī “bleed” is essentially expendable artwork that is purposely extended to hang outside of the trim lines, or aka, cut lines.

Printing with bleeds final print product