Hi, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To, and today I'm going to tell you how to add
bleed in your InDesign document.
And I'm also going to go over what a bleed is, and why you need it, when to use crop
marks, bleeds, and how to use a template that shows the safe line, the cut line, and the
bleed line.
OK, and the reason I wanted to do this is because when I was a young graphic designer,
this was one of the harder things to understand.
It was something they tried to go over in college, but you don't really understand,
at least I didn't, until you actually get out there and you start using it.
Anytime anything goes off the edge like a photo goes off the edge of the page, you have
to have a bleed.
And the reason for that is, bleeds are kind of like overhang or leeway for a printer.
So you know how like when you cut five sheets of paper with scissors at the same time, the
top page is usually pretty accurate but that last page, the fifth page, will shift a little,
and this is the same with the big printers.
So they have much better tools, of course, but they're cutting anywhere from 500 to 1000
sheets at a time.
And so they can get it much better than you or I with scissors, but there's still going
to be a shift along the bottom.
And this is why we give them bleed, and we have a safe line, so that they can shift a
little bit, and it won't mess up the design.
Now if you have a really small document like a postcard, or 8 1/2 by 11 flyer or something
like that...anything that falls off the edge of the page, whether it be like maybe a photo
or a color that bleeds off the edge of the page, then you have to give the printer bleeds
to work with, and they are usually .125 or an eighth of an inch larger than the cut size
on all sides.
So if you're doing an 8 1/2 by 11, that would become 8.75 by 11.25.
So an eighth and an eighth (.25) , and then an eighth and an eighth on top and bottom
which makes .25.
If you have a larger document, like a 20 by 30 poster, you are going to want to give them
even more bleed because they're going to have even more shift because it's such a large
document.
Something like that could be a quarter of an inch all the way around.
Really the rule is to talk to your printer.
Find out if they want crop marks.
Find out if they want bleeds and how much bleed they want in that document.
All right, now we're going to jump into InDesign.
I'm going to show you exactly how to set up a document with bleeds.
And I'm going to talk about cut line, crop marks, and when each is necessary.
For the most part, that will depend on your printer.
First, I'm going to create a new document, and I'm going to make this inches and just
make it six by four.
'Create.'
And I'm going to assume this is a postcard.
I got a template online that shows cut marks, bleed marks, and all of those kinds of things.
So here it is.
The cut line is going to be right on the very edge of my document.
And then the red part is the bleed area.
So if you set up your document correctly, this is how it should work.
The bleed comes all the way out to this edge, the cut line is here, and that's the edge
of the document.
And then the safety line is here.
So that means you can keep all of the important parts, photos and your text inside this green
area.
And everything else you'll pull outside the cut line.
And I'll show you how to do that.
I'm going to load up some artwork, and this I found on StockLayouts.com.
I'm going to just copy this, and I'll just paste it.
Now this artwork....
I'm going to group (CMD G), and then I'm going to line it up.
This is where the cut line is, but we do have some things going off the edge.
This piece is going off the edge and this one down here is going off the edge.
It needs to overhang into the bleed area.
Now I'm going to bring our template to the front.
And I'm going to do...I think I'll put this on a new layer,
and we'll make it 30% so we can see through it.
And I'll lock that layer.
Now I'll get back on layer one.
If we wanted to, we could put this all the way up against that green line, but we couldn't
do this because it might shift in the cutting, and that part would get cut off.
So I don't really actually want to do that.
But I want to show you the bleed part.
So I have bleed going on here.
I've got this piece which is bleeding over the edge.
If you have photos and stuff like that, they need to be all the way out to the bleed line.
Let's go ahead and set up our document.
So hit OPT CMD P. This is also under File>Document Setup.
And 'bleed' and 'slug' is right down here.
And with a postcard, we'd want .125 inches, and that should be the same top, bottom, inside
and outside, and then we'll say 'OK'.
As you can see, it's added a guide out here.
Now I'm going to throw away this top layer because we really don't need it.
That is just a template.
But as you can see the... we can still see how far past the cut line we need to pull
our art.
OK, now let's say I wanted to have a picture in here.
So I'm going to hit CMD D, and I'll place a picture, and we'll just put it right down
here.
I want it to go all the way across, and I'll send it to the back.
This would be very ugly, but you get my drift.
If you put your photos right up to this cut line, you risk having the printer shift, and
then you have a white gap between the edge of your page and your picture.
So you want to pull this all the way out here on all sides.
It's kind of hard to see, but my cut line is right here.
It gives the printer enough leeway to have an eighth of an inch overhang.
So that is how bleeds work.
Now if you want to export your PDF with bleeds, the way to do that is File>Export, and we'll
call it 'bleeds'.
In the export PDF dialog box, you would need to come down here to marks and bleeds.
If you have bleed going off the edge, you always want bleeds, and you set this up right
down here.
You can either use your document bleed settings, and that will automatically set it at .125
because that's that red line is showing you where that's cutting off.
Or if you don't want to set them up in your document, you can just put .125 here, and
it will automatically fill in all the rest.
You should always have this checked.
OK, so let's see what happens when we do an export here.
Alright, now let's try exporting with crop marks and bleeds.
We'll do that here.
We'll put crop marks and then the bleed will stay the same.
And then we'll export.
Alright, and I'm going to do one more that is only crop marks with no bleeds and show
you what that looks like.
OK, and now I'm going to just preview and show you what these look like.
Here's the crops only with no bleeds.
And if you tried to actually cut this with an exacto knife, you would probably have a
little white edge here unless you've cut it further in.
But if you cut right where the crop marks are, it probably wouldn't be perfect, and
you would end up with a little white edge around there.
Let's look at just the bleeds and crops.
Here you have a lot more leeway, and this is what your printer wants is this bleed so
you can cut and not be perfect and still not have a messed up print.
And then finally bleeds only.
A lot of printers want it this way.
You can't tell where to cut on this, but they know it's .125, and they'll come in just that
far.
A lot of printers don't want crop marks because sometimes they will show up on the printout.
So they want you to leave those off and just have bleeds set into the document.
So definitely talk to your printer if you're getting ready to create something new for
them, or if it's the first time you've used that printer.
Reach out to them, find out what they want, whether it's bleeds or crop marks or both.
Alright, so that's my video for this week.
I hope this has been helpful for you.
I know these things can sometimes be confusing, but anyway, if you liked it, please click
the 'Like' button and I will see everyone next Thursday.
See you then!!