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Printing guide
What is bleed in printing?
Bleed is the extra strip of artwork, usually 0.125 inch (3 mm), that extends past the edge where the piece will be cut. It exists because a cutter can drift slightly, and without bleed that drift leaves a thin white line along the edge. Any color, photo or shape that touches the edge needs to run into the bleed.
Bleed, trim and safe zone
Three lines matter on a print file. The trim line is the finished edge of the piece. The bleed line sits 0.125 inch outside it, and background color or images run out to it. The safe zone sits 0.125 to 0.25 inch inside the trim, and everything you cannot afford to lose, names, phone numbers, logos, stays inside it.
| Trim | The finished size, where the cut lands |
|---|---|
| Bleed | 0.125 in past the trim on every side. Backgrounds and photos extend here |
| Safe zone | 0.125 to 0.25 in inside the trim. Text and logos stay here |
| Business card | 3.5 x 2 in trim, 3.75 x 2.25 in with bleed |
| Postcard 4 x 6 | 4 x 6 in trim, 4.25 x 6.25 in with bleed |
| Flyer 8.5 x 11 | 8.5 x 11 in trim, 8.75 x 11.25 in with bleed |
What full bleed means
Full bleed means the printed design runs to every edge of the finished piece with no white border. To get it, the piece is printed on a larger sheet with the artwork extended into the bleed, then cut down. Most home and office printers leave an unprinted margin to grip the paper, so full bleed usually means a print shop: we print on a larger sheet and trim to size.
No bleed means the design stops short of the edge and a white margin is part of the look. That is a design choice, not a mistake, but it has to be deliberate. A background that stops exactly at the trim line will show a white sliver on one side after cutting.
How to add bleed in each program
Adobe InDesign: File, Document Setup, set Bleed to 0.125 inch on all sides, then export a PDF with Use Document Bleed Settings and crop marks on. Adobe Illustrator: set Bleed to 0.125 inch in the New Document dialog, or later under File, Document Setup. Export the PDF with bleed and marks.
Canva: open File, then Settings, and turn on Show print bleed, then export as PDF Print with crop marks and bleed. Microsoft Word and PowerPoint have no bleed setting. Make the page 0.25 inch larger in each dimension than the finished size, run the background to the page edge, and save as PDF. We trim it to size.
The mistakes we catch most
A background that ends at the trim line. A photo scaled to fit the trim instead of the bleed. A border drawn 0.05 inch from the edge, which never survives cutting evenly. Text placed in the bleed zone, which gets cut off. A PDF exported without the bleed even though the document had it set.
Every file that comes into The Printing House gets checked for all of these before a PDF proof goes out, and we tell you what to fix or fix it ourselves. That check is most of the reason same day printing works here: a file with no bleed found at 3 PM is a job that does not ship at 3:30.
Quick answers
People also ask
If your design has color or photos at the edge, a normal cutting drift leaves a thin white line on one or more edges. If your design already has a white border, nothing happens.
No. The bleed gets cut off. A business card with bleed is a 3.75 by 2.25 inch file that becomes a 3.5 by 2 inch card.
The area 0.125 to 0.25 inch inside the trim line. Keep text and logos there so a slight cutting shift never clips them.
Often yes, if the background is a flat color or the photo has room to extend. If the design was built with no room past the edge, we tell you what to change before anything prints.
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