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• • July 21, 2022 at 6:33 am #14367988
    Timothy Murray

    Participant

    Got a question for everyone… What are bleed marks for?

    I know what a crop mark is for, and I know what bleeds themselves are for, but why would I need a cut line that follows the outside of my bleed? Why would I want to trim once then trim again? Just curious….

  • July 21, 2022 at 6:39 am #14367989
    Kay Harper

    Participant

    Bleed marks (usually set at .125″ in US) allow designers to have artwork that extends beyond the trim or crop line so that when the piece is cut or trimmed along the crop mark, there will be no white showing. Many commercial pieces are cut by machine, so the bleed helps to allow for slight variations in the actual cut line. Hope this helps.

  • July 21, 2022 at 7:05 am #14367992
    Steve Hall

    Member

    <usually set at .125? in US> We all do work on our machines these days that are for all kinds of printing machines. I set the the bleed a bit larger for large format printing.

  • July 21, 2022 at 7:23 am #14367993
    Petar Petrenko

    Participant

    What do you mean with: “Why would I want to trim once then trim again?”.

    The printer trims the book only once and if the picture you want to be positioned at the margins ends is not outside of page for 3-5mm, than a white space may occure because the trimming is not a very accurate process.

  • July 21, 2022 at 7:43 am #14367995
    Timothy Murray

    Participant

    Thanks everyone.

    I know what a bleed is for, what I’m asking about are the extra crop marks that InDesign refers to as “Bleed Marks”

    In the print dialog under Marks and Bleeds, there is a list of available printer marks:
    – Crop Marks
    – Bleed Marks
    – Registration Marks
    – Color Bars
    – Page Information.

    I’m curious about the “Bleed Marks”. They print as an extra set of crop marks but aligned to the outside of the bleed. Why? What use do they have?

    thanks in advance

  • July 21, 2022 at 8:56 am #14367999
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    It’s an excellent question, Timothy. I don’t think anyone really needs them other than as an indicator that the objects are really bleeding past the crop marks and far enough out.

    That said, a lot of printers don’t want ANY marks anymore. Most printers I’ve worked with in recent years say “don’t add trim/crop or bleed marks; our system does that for us.” It’s worth asking the printer.

    • July 26, 2022 at 2:56 pm #14368371
      Brett Stone

      Participant

      If PDFs are exported as Layered PDFs, the print vendor can more easily make the Marks layer non-printing/”off”, though getting a print vendor to recognize that a file is layered can be tough (because it’s so uncommon.)

      I might also clarify: larger, more savvy print vendors with prepress systems probably prefer no marks (but the PDF still contains all Trim Box, Bleed Box, etc.)

      Smaller, less savvy printers who ‘just do it the way we’ve always done it’ might freak out if there were no visible crop marks to confirm the artwork is correctly constructed.

  • July 21, 2022 at 3:00 pm #14368019
    Timothy Murray

    Participant

    Thanks,

    Thats kind of what I thought, that it was just some vestigial organ from the dark ages of print layout. Like the terminology for leading and kerning… I’d be interested to know what it used to be used for since Adobe, in their infinite wisdom, has included it for so many years, though. Just out of curiosity since I see it everyday. :)

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