If you're a designer or a publisher, or even if your a hobbyist, there's going to be a situation sooner than later where you're going to want to have an image, color or other graphic print all the way to the edge of your final printed product. This is known in the creative & printing circles as a "bleed." In this article I'm going to show you how to add a bleed to any Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop document. So let's get started!
A bleed is a color, photo or graphic that prints right up to the edge of the paper or other material. This is achieved by printing an image area larger than the final size, and trimming it back. Although there are some "borderless printers" on the consumer market, most of these are not practical for commercial applications, so the print and trim method is the current standard for borderless printing.
The good news is that setting up bleeds in Adobe's software is very easy, and I'll walk you through it step by step. Just jump down to the heading that matches the software you're using to setup your document.
In InDesign (and really any Adobe software), the best time to setup your bleeds is when you're first creating the document. Here's how you do it.
If you enter the Preview mode, you will see where your image or graphic will be trimmed.
Setting up a bleed in Illustrator is pretty much the same as setting it up in InDesign, although the interface is a little bit different.
Adding a bleed to a Photoshop document is a bit of a different story than Illustrator and InDesign. Since Photoshop is primarily a photo manipulation and editing software, it is not really designed for easily creating press-ready files on its own. The obvious intention is that you'll place your Photoshop document into InDesign or Illustrator to create your final print files. That being said, it is possible create a "bleed" in Photoshop. sort of.
Please note: using Photoshop the create press-ready files intended to bleed requires some coordination with your printer.
Now it will be obvious where your document will be trimmed, and you can setup a "safe zone" to keep text and other important elements from getting too close to the edge.
When your design is complete and you're ready to send it to your printer, follow these steps to complete your press-ready document:
When you're done, you'll have a press-ready file for the most part, but it will be missing the bleed box in the PDF file. This is where you'll want to coordinate with your printer. Let them know that the document bleeds and what size it should trim to. Since the file you provided is larger than your final trim size, your printer should be able to make this work for you.
If you'd like to learn more about making files print-ready, check out How to Prepare Files for Print for more information and resources.
Hope you enjoyed learning about setting up bleeds for borderless printing in your Adobe documents. Of course, if you're struggling,
. If you have any questions or would like to add your own tips for adding bleeds to Adobe documents, sound off in the comments below. Thanks for reading!
Creative Director / Marketing Manager for Casey Printing
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