The Print Illusion – Why do I need to add bleed to my files for commercial print?

Like much in the world of print there is magic afoot. The printer creates tricks or illusions that make your finished printed work look Glorious and Professional.

When we talk about ‘bleed’ we are talking about a margin of image or colour that exists outside of the printed area to help with an important illusion.

The illusion that each piece of print is printed perfectly up the edge of each sheet or card.

In the real world this kind of finish is impossible, so achieve the impossible we cheat.

Paper is an organic substrate which shrinks and grows with heat humidity and temperature, it is then printed on a machine which whether traditional or digital, mechanically moves the paper through a designated paper path to receive the ink/toner. For all of this to happen and the ink stop exactly on the edge leaving no white space or an overflow of ink inside the machine would not be possible in itself, then when all those sheets are stacked together to be trimmed in a paper guillotine each sheet would have to be stacked to millimetre perfection which again is unlikely if not impossible.

So, the cheat we use is the margin of bleed. It is designed to be trimmed off and thrown away.

This means however small those tolerances of substrate and process are, each sheet looks fabulous. The image cleanly finishes exactly on the edge of each piece of print.

Avoid common mistakes:

The most common mistake is customers supplying a document with bleed where they leave a white margin around the supplied document. This is usually because they have selected create document with bleed from a drop-down menu without understanding that the image/background must extend across the bleed area. This must be done in the document set up.

The second mistake we see is supplying a document with bleed but then allowing text or other vital items to run right to the edge meaning it will be trimmed off to waste when the document is trimmed or finished.

To provide bleed correctly we suggest it is considered as a priority right back at the start of the design process.

So for example when setting up an A4 (210mmx297mm) document, the document size would include bleed.

This would mean setting up a document 216mm x 303mm this leaves a 3mm bleed area all around.

Text and other items not intended to trim or bleed of the edge of the document would then be created inside a margin 3mm smaller than the finished A4 size. So the margin box would be 204mm x 291mm.

When finished to A4 the document will have no risk of trimming important information but will have crisp edges where colour runs right to the edge.

All the best 😊.