Printing with Bleeds

"Bleed" is the term for printing that goes right to the edge of the printed paper. Printed pieces that have a white border or white around the edges, DO NOT bleed. If you have images or backgrounds that you want to print (bleed) off the edge of the paper, then you must design your job larger than the final CUT SIZE. We create bleeds by actually cutting through the enlarged image/background. Using bleeds create a great effect and is a great way of designing a nice printed piece.

What I do to design is create the art in Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator the size of the printed piece INCLUDING Bleeds. I usually leave 1/8th of an inch around (this is standard in the printing industry) and bring it into my page layout program such as Adobe InDesign or Quark Xpress. Then I place the image at -.125 x -.125, and viola that's it. Then when you go to print (in the print settings) there is a place where you can configure the print settings to add .125 inch bleed (it's different in Adobe InDesign and Quark), but it will be quite obvious. Then print your high res .pdf (see above) and add crop marks, now your ready to send it off to the printer.

For more info on printing go to Coastal Impressions.