Have you ever been completely baffled when your printer asks you to re-send your
artwork with a “bleed” included? I was confused the first time that I
sent a file to a printing company too. Luckily, I was working with a
company that took the time to explain what a bleed is to me so that I
wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. I know that most printers won’t
take the time to explain it to you, so here is my attempt at changing
the pre-press attitudes that have prevailed in the past. Whenever you
have a page that has images you want to “fall off the edge of the page”
you must include a bleed on your document. A bleed is an extra 1/8” or
1/4” added on the outside of your main document in which those pictures
“bleed” onto. The extra space will ultimately be trimmed off, however
adding the extra room allows for a wider margin of error for when your printer
attempts to trim your printed piece. Why do they need this extra margin of
error? I know, they should be masters at cutting by now, but what most
people don’t understand is that we stack all of the documents on top of
each other after they are printed, and cut them all at once to ensure
that the pieces are trimmed to the same size. This is an excellent
practice, however there is a margin of error that is created by cutting
them all at once. The bottom and top of the pile, even though we clamp it down as
hard as we can, sometimes stretches and moves during the cutting
process. Having the images bleed over the edge of where you want us to
trim the piece, means that if those pages stretch and move even just the
slightest bit, you and your end user of your printed piece will not
notice. If the image did not bleed and we attempted to trim the piece to
the size you requested, the top one may look great, but once you got to
the bottom piece, there would be a bit of white paper showing on the
edge making your document look un-professional.
Including the proper bleed on your document is easy in most
instances. With InDesign you can set your bleed in the “Document Setup”
dialog box. With Quark you just have to click on >Window >Guides
>Create Bleed and Safety Guides. With Illustrator, Publisher, and
Photoshop you will have to do some fancy footwork. With all 3 of those
programs you will have to set your page size to be larger than the
actual trim size that you want. So for an 8.5x11” letter size page, if
you want to add a 1/8” bleed to it you will have to set your page size to 8.75”x
11.25”. 1/8” bleed on both sides adds up to adding an extra .25” to both
dimensions of your page. If you are using any other programs to design
your documents, then good luck I can’t help! I hope this explains why we ask for a bleed to be included on the documents you send to your printer. Oh and don't forget to set your bleeds in the "Marks and Bleeds" dialog box when you create your press ready .pdf file!
