help with bleed

Forgive me if this is a repeat post. I am new to photoshop and even newer to the concept of "bleed". I am designing a 5.5 by 3.5 in. card that is supposed to be borderless. The printer says there is a 1/16 in. bleed, so I should make the artwork 5.625 by 3.625 and it will be trimmed to 5.5 by 3.5. I want to make sure none of the artowrk is cutoff. When bleed is involved, is the artwork automatically shrunk a little by the printer to make up for the bleed? Does Photoshop have a setting to account for different bleeds that printers may have?

Thanks,

Peter

"peter" wrote:

Forgive me if this is a repeat post. I am new to photoshop and even newer to the concept of "bleed". I am designing a 5.5 by 3.5 in. card that is supposed to be borderless. The printer says there is a 1/16 in. bleed, so I should make the artwork 5.625 by 3.625 and it will be trimmed to 5.5 by 3.5. I want to make sure none of the artowrk is cutoff. When bleed is involved, is the artwork automatically shrunk a little by the printer to make up for the bleed? Does Photoshop have a setting to account for different bleeds that printers may have?

Would someone buy a wall-to-wall carpeting exactly the size of the room given on the floor plan? Of course not, it is common sense to buy it a foot or so larger, and cut it to size afterwards in order to compensate for deviations. Exactly this is the concept of "bleed". There are inevitable intrinsic imprecisions in the printing process too, variations in paper size, positioning of the printing plates and the paper in the unit, accuracy of the cutting machine, which are compensated by oversizing artwort which is to be printed borderless and cutting it to size afterwards.

Peter

In article ,
"peter" wrote:

Forgive me if this is a repeat post. I am new to photoshop and even newer to the concept of "bleed". I am designing a 5.5 by 3.5 in. card that is supposed to be borderless. The printer says there is a 1/16 in. bleed, so I should make the artwork 5.625 by 3.625 and it will be trimmed to 5.5 by 3.5. I want to make sure none of the artowrk is cutoff. When bleed is involved, is the artwork automatically shrunk a little by the printer to make up for the bleed? Does Photoshop have a setting to account for different bleeds that printers may have?

You can't avoid having some of the artwork cut off due to the imprecision inherent in rapidly manipulating flexible, lightweight objects like sheets of paper; everything that bleeds is 'expendable'. The printers shouldn't have to resize the image -- although if you *don't* provide a bleed they may *enlarge* your artwork, thereby losing the area around the edges willy-nilly. Keep the essential parts of your design within the trim area (ideally allowing some margin for error, so to speak -- periodical advertising rate-cards often give specs for a 'live' area that's safe to use for text &c., alongside their 'trim' and 'bleed' dimensions). In Photoshop, like most programs, you can place ruler guides e.g. 1/16" in from the edges of your bleed area to help you 'stay in the box'. To visualize your piece as it will appear when finished you can make a corresponding white frame using an adjustment layer -- make sure it's hidden or deleted before sending the file out, though!

--
Odysseus

In article ,
"peter" wrote:

Forgive me if this is a repeat post. I am new to photoshop and even newer to the concept of "bleed". I am designing a 5.5 by 3.5 in. card that is supposed to be borderless. The printer says there is a 1/16 in. bleed, so I should make the artwork 5.625 by 3.625 and it will be trimmed to 5.5 by 3.5. I want to make sure none of the artowrk is cutoff. When bleed is involved, is the artwork automatically shrunk a little by the printer to make up for the bleed?

No. You are missing the point. The artwork is not shrunk.

The artwork is printed too big, and the printed piece is cut down.

Imagine that you are making a card that is 5.5 by 3.5. It is printed on a bigger sheet of paper. Then it is cut. If the cut is off by a teeny, tiny, itsy-bitsy bit, the color will not go to the edge of the card.

So you print it bigger on the sheet of paper, so that it overlaps the part that will be cut. If the background of the card is red, you print red farther out than 5.5 by 3.5 so that when you cut it, you are trimming off some red.

--
Art, photography, shareware, polyamory, literature, kink: all at http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

I get it now! Thanks all.

Peter

I get it now! Thanks all.

Peter