Ensuring Objects Bleed off the Page Properly
We were recently alerted to a “practice question” on the Adobe ACE Exam Guide that Adobe published a few months ago which seems very confusing, even to the point of offering the wrong correct answer. The question is:
You want InDesign to alert you if your art is not bleeding off the page properly according to your print provider’s specifications. What should you do?
A. You enter the correct Bleed size by choosing File > Document Setup.
B. You create an Adobe PDF Preset that has Use Document Bleed Settings selected.
C. In a custom preflight profile, you select the Bleed and Slug Setup checkbox. You then select the Bleed Size Must Be checkbox and enter the desired distance from the page edge.
D. In a custom preflight profile, you select the Bleed and Slug Setup checkbox, the Bleed Size Must Be checkbox, and the Bleed/Trim Hazard checkbox. You then enter the desired distances from the page edge
Adobe insists that the answer is D. But several people have pointed out that they cannot find Bleed/Trim Hazard in the Preflight Profiles dialog box and it seems as though C is the correct answer.
As James Wamser helpfully pointed out in our earlier blog post: Bleed/Trim Hazard is actually there… it’s just under the Images and Objects category, rather than the Document category (where Bleed and Slug Setup is). The explanation is that the latter checks the document setup itself, while the former checks objects inside the document (to ensure they are bleeding properly).
So let’s say the document is set up with the proper bleed amount, but the objects don’t bleed far enough off the page. Turning on the Bleed and Slug Setup checkbox would give you No Errors. You must turn on Bleed/Trim Hazard in order to get the error correctly.
There’s no doubt that is a tricky question! But from my reading of it, it is a fair one.
Good luck all ACE exam testers!
(I know you’ve heard this before, but we will be releasing an ebook from Mike Rankin on the topic of how to study for the ACE exam very soon. It’s being edited now, and should be out in another few weeks!)
 |
I think I would have got that one right — but it would have taken me an anxious few minutes getting there!
By the way, it’s nagging away at the back of my mind: how much longer do we current CS3 ACEs have to RE-certify? Is it 90 days from when the CS4 exam was first published, making it… sometime around the end of April?
My understanding is that once you are certified, you can call yourself an ACE in InDesign. After 90 days, if you haven’t taken the recertification, you have to start specifying the version of InDesign you certified in. However, I think you can take the recertification after 90 days to recertify in the newer version. So the 90 days is all about “staying current.” However, it’s all rather unclear, even when I asked the person in charge of the program.
First rule to succeed in a test:
Read the text of each question thoroughly, twice!
Old Jeremy, I have got this message last Abril 2nd:
Illustrator CS4, InDesign CS4, Acrobat 9, and Photoshop CS4 ACE Recertification English exams were published in February.
Existing Adobe Certified Instructors (ACI) will need to pass these recertification exams to retain their ACI status by June 30, 2009. This is 90 days from the date of this announcement.
Not sure if it applies in your case, I will try mine next week, send some luck.
:-)
Thanks, David and federico!
From what federico says, it’s the “date of announcement” that counts. But that must be different from the publish date, because there are more than 90 days between February and June 30. (Although I suspect all those wild Certified Instructor parties might have taken away a “lost weekend” or two.)
I wish you the very best of luck with the exam, federico. You’ve inspired me to do the same, sometime next week.
David, could you please re-check with Your Sources if the June 30 deadline Federico talks about is The Real Thing? I have received NO emails from Adobe in this matter, despite that being in their ACE database. I sure hope so, for meeting an end-of-April deadline for my IDCS4 re-certification would probably be impossible for me — so every day counts!
@Klaus, I have pinged my Adobe contact again. However, Adobe is closed this entire week, so I don’t expect to hear back for a while.
On Adobe’s site they say “Once obtained, your certification is valid until 90 days after the exam version of your certification is retired.”
It certainly is a gray area, but I always understood certification to imply the latest version. That is why the ACE logos do not include the version number. If you don’t recertify, I thought you are not allowed to continue using the logos or say you are certified. That was my impression at least.
I never noticed the Bleed/Trim Hazard checkbox before, but the first three answers are clearly wrong, so I probably would have guessed “D” banking on the fact that it really exists somewhere… ;)
Good to know about it though!
I agree, you do have to read every question very carefully!
— JW
I need help with setting a black bar that bleeds off the edge of the page, can anyone help me? I have a template that I have been working in, it’s a catalog that I am making and in the template it has tabs set on the side of the page so the customer looking through the catalog can see with the book closed, which section they would like to open the book to. I am stuck and already on page 331 of this template and each page has art work that needs to bleed off the page. any help would be appreciated…
Jeannie: I’m not sure what your question is. You want to make sure the object bleeds off the side of the page. Here’s more on bleeds:
https://creativepro.com/adding-bleed-to-a-document.php
and
https://creativepro.com/right-bleed-print-pdfs.php