Bleed and safety margins:
setting up a print-ready file.

Why they matter

In offset printing, a job is printed on a larger sheet and trimmed to its finished size afterwards. Every trim has a small, normal tolerance. If a background or a photograph stops exactly on the trim line, a deviation of a fraction of a millimetre leaves a thin white line along the edge. Bleed and safety margins exist to absorb that tolerance.

Bleed

Anything that runs to the edge of the piece —a background, a photograph, a band of colour— continues 3 mm beyond the trim line on every side. An A5 piece (148 × 210 mm) is therefore set up at 154 × 216 mm. Bleed is not empty space: it is a genuine continuation of the design, which is trimmed away.

Safety margin

Text, logos, page numbers and every important element stay at least 4 mm inside the trim line. In multi-page work the distance from the spine needs particular care, because part of each page disappears into the binding.

Crop marks and the finished size

When exporting the PDF, crop marks and bleed are switched on in the design application. The file then also carries the finished size (the TrimBox), which prepress systems read. A PDF without this information leaves room for misinterpretation.

Common mistakes

• A background that stops at the edge. Without bleed, a white line appears after trimming.
• A border close to the trim. A frame a few millimetres from the edge exposes every small deviation; it is better kept well inside.
• Bleed filled with white or a stretched image. Bleed should be a natural continuation of the design.
• A page at the wrong size. The PDF page is the finished size of the piece, not an A4 page with the design in the middle.

Check before you send

The free PDF check verifies finished size, bleed and the distance of text from the trim in a few seconds, on your own device. Full guidance is in our file specifications. A file that is right from the start means fewer corrections, less paper waste and faster delivery.

For any job, send us your specifications with a quote request.