Printer’s marks and bleeds
When you prepare artwork for printing, a number of marks are needed for the printer device to register the artwork elements precisely and verify correct color. You can add the following kinds of printer’s marks to your artwork:
Fine (hairline) horizontal and vertical rules that define where the page should be trimmed. Trim marks can also help register (align) one color separation to another.
Small targets outside the page area for aligning the different separations in a color document.
Small squares of color representing the CMYK inks and tints of gray (in 10% increments). Your service provider uses these marks to adjust ink density on the printing press.
Labels the film with the name of the artboard number, the time and date of printout, the line screen used, the screen angle for the separation, and the color of each particular plate. These labels appear at the tops of the images.
A. Star target (not optional) B. Registration mark C. Page information D. Trim marks E. Color bar F. Tint bar
Add printer’s marks
To avoid drawing printer’s marks on a bleed, be sure to enter an Offset value greater than the Bleed value.
About bleeds
Bleed is the amount of artwork that falls outside of the printing bounding box, or outside the crop area and trim marks. You can include bleed in your artwork as a margin of error—to ensure that the ink is still printed to the edge of the page after the page is trimmed or that an image can be stripped into a keyline in a document. Once you create the artwork that extends into the bleed, you can use Illustrator to specify the extent of the bleed. Increasing the bleed makes Illustrator print more of the artwork that is located beyond the trim marks. The trim marks still define the same size printing bounding box, however.
The size of the bleed you use depends on its purpose. A press bleed (that is, an image that bleeds off the edge of the printed sheet) should be at least 18 points. If the bleed is to ensure that an image fits a keyline, it needs to be no more than 2 or 3 points. Your print shop can advise you on the size of the bleed necessary for your particular job.
Add a bleed
Enter values for Top, Left, Bottom, and Right to specify the placement of the bleed marks. Click the link icon to make all the values the same.
Select Use Document Bleed to use the bleed settings defined in the New Document dialog box.
The maximum bleed you can set is 72 points; the minimum bleed is 0 points.
How to Add Bleed in Adobe Illustrator
Adding bleed marks to your artwork isn’t only the print shop’s responsibility, it’s yours as well. Can’t blame them for bad cutting because you forgot to add bleeds. Well, I’m talking about myself. We all learn from experience, right?
Once I sent an event flyer to print, 3000 copies, and when I got the artwork, I noticed that some letters near the edges were slightly cut off. When I went back to the Ai file, I realized that I forgot to add bleed marks in Illustrator.
Ever since then, print = add bleed is the formula in my head whenever I got a project that needs to be printed.
In this tutorial, you will learn what are bleeds, why to use bleeds, and how to add them in Adobe Illustrator.
Table of Contents
What Are Bleeds & Why Should You Use Them?
Let’s be imaginative. Bleed is the protector of your artboard edges. It’s most commonly used when you need to print a PDF version of your design.
As you can see, bleed is the red border around your artboard.
Even though your design is within the artboard, when you print it, part of the edges might still be cut off. Bleeds can prevent cutting off the actual artwork because they will be trimmed off instead of the artboard edges, so it protects your design.
2 Ways to Add Bleeds in Illustrator
Note: all screenshots from this tutorial are taken from Adobe Illustrator CC Mac version. Windows or other versions can look different. Windows users change the Command key to Ctrl.
You can set up bleeds when you create a new document or add them to an existing artwork. Ideally, if you already know it’s a print design, you should set it up when you create a new document. But if you really forgot, there’s a solution too.
Method 1: Adding bleeds to a new document
Step 1: Open Adobe Illustrator and create a new document. Go to the overhead menu and select File > New or use the keyboard shortcut Command + N .
A document setting box should open.
Step 2: Choose a document size, measurement unit (pt, px, in, mm, etc), and in the bleeds section input the bleed value. If your use inches, a commonly used bleed value is 0.125 inches but there isn’t a strict rule.
For example, personally, I prefer to use mm when I design for print, and I always set my bleed to 3mm.
When the link button is activated, you only need to input one value and it’ll apply to all sides. If you don’t want the same bleeds for all sides, you can click to unlink and input the value individually.
Step 3: Click Create and your new document is created with bleeds!
If you want to change your mind about the bleed values after you create the document, you can still do it following the same method as adding bleeds to existing artwork.
Method 2: Adding bleeds to existing artwork
Finished your design and realized that you didn’t add bleeds? No big deal, you can still add them. For example, these letters are attaching the artboard edges and it would be a challenge to print or cut, so it’s a good idea to add bleeds.
Go to the overhead menu and select File > Document Setup. You’ll see a Document Setup window pop up and you can input bleed values.
Click OK and the bleeds will show around your artboard.
Saving As PDF with bleeds
Saving your file as a PDF with bleed marks is an important step before you send your design to print.
When this setting box pops up, go to Marks and Bleeds. Change the Adobe PDF Preset to [High Quality Print] and in the Bleeds section, check the Use Document Bleed Settings box.
When you check the Use Document Bleed Settings option, it will automatically fill in the bleed value you input when you created the document or added it from the Document setup.
Click Save PDF. When you open the PDF file, you’ll see that there’s space on the edges (remember the letters were touching the edges?).
Normally, I would add trim marks as well to make it easier for cutting.
If you want to show the trim marks, you can check the Trim Marks option when you save the file as a pdf and leave the rest as it is.
Now your file is good to print.
Conclusion
If you’re designing for print, you should get into the habit of adding bleeds the moment you create the document so that you can start planning the artwork position from the very beginning.
Yes, you can also add it later from Document Setup or when you save the file, but you might have to resize or readjust your artwork, so why the trouble?
Leave a Reply Cancel Reply
Hi! Thank you for your time, and patience. Learning to do something like this, for me is a big step!
Happy to hear, Tyre.
Thank you so much for this tutorial.
It’s refreshing that your tutorial is not full of ads and stuff.
You’re welcome, Vicente.
Im new on this but I loved the way you explain everything thank you for your help .
Welcome to the creative world, Yamile ��
I think you are missing a huge part of the reason why you add bleeds. The purpose is so that when the paper is trimmed that you have enough artwork BLEEDING into the edges. In your example you really should extend the graphics or text into the bleed. You simply have just aligned it with the bleed which serves no purpose. Hope that helps!
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My name is June, I’m a graphic designer and a problem solver. I’m here to help you solve your Illustrator problems. Read more about me and why I created this website here.
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Что такое «Bleed»
Допустим нужно сделать буклет с картинкой до самого края, то есть под обрез. Нельзя просто располагать такие элементы вплотную к линии реза, потому что нож может смещаться относительно линии реза, как наружу, так и вовнутрь, и в результате можем получить вместо картинок под обрез, белую каемочку по периметру. Причем толщина этой каемочки будет разной. Это не ошибка, а просто погрешность подрезки.
Как правильно сделать макет «под обрез»
Чтобы буклет, который я сделал, действительно был под обрез, линия реза должна проходить по картинке. Но если в типографии мою линию реза подвинут во внутрь макета, я конечно получу буклет без каемочек, но только другого размера (меньше чем задумывалось). Так тоже не годится.
Получается я сам должен немного увеличить размер моего буклета на несколько миллиметров (обычно 2-3 мм) в каждую сторону. В результате получается изделие нужного размера и ни каких белых полосок по краям. Область, которую я добавил, снаружи макета и называется — «Bleed». То есть если типография просит сделать Bleed 2,5 мм, это значит размер макета нужно увеличить на 2,5 мм в каждую сторону.
Зачем нужен Bleed
Собственно зачем нужна эта область — понятно, но зачем так сложно? Ведь макет и так можно сделать чуть больше. Дело в том, что если блид сделан именно как Bleed, то его можно включать и выключать. Например, когда файл отправляем в типографию — Bleed включаем, а когда нужно посмотреть, как будет выглядеть макет после обреза, — Bleed выключаем.
Ошибки в макетах «под обрез»
В макетах «под обрез», кроме элементов, уходящих за линию реза, есть и те, что остаются в макете полностью. Если такой элемент (например текст) слишком близко расположен к краю макета, то при подрезке часть этого текста может быть отрезана. В этом случае как раз удобно проверять макет, выключая показ области Bleed.
[AI CC2022] Блиды в иллюстраторе
Один молодой человек должен был написать текст к имеющимся картинкам (и только!), а вместо этого вообразил себя знатоком Иллюстратора и всё отведённое время (2 недели) потратил на то, чтобы лично исполнить макет. В итоге даже текст оттуда пришлось дёргать крошечными кусочками — остальное ушло в унитаз. Но он, сам не понимая этого, так выставил блиды и размер артборда, что случайно получилось правильно. Он в принципе не понимал, что такое блиды, CMYK, направляющие и т.п. Уже и не вспомню всех деталей.
Я это к чему? Сочетание нескольких ошибок случайно может дать иллюзию правильного результата. А может и не дать. Так что ждём комментариев от ТС.
Извините за ещё один оффтоп.