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What is Bleed?

If any element on your document layout makes contact with the document border you will have to use bleed. The trick is to place the element so that it goes over border where the document will be cropped after printing.

The term bleed is used for all objects overlapping the border of your document. Let's say your working on a brochure with images against the sides of your pages. You'll supply the printer with a document somewhat larger then the final document will be.

After the brochure is printed it will be cropped to it's correct size. The bleed in your document gives the cropping some room for error. The paper itself can expand or contract, the cropping machine could setup wrong or the person working on the brochure could make a mistake. There are a lot of factors that could go wrong with the cropping, if you wouldn't be using bleed the images wouldn't be neatly aligned with the side of your printed document.

The minimum acceptable amount of bleed would usually be 3mm on all four sides of the job. There for an image which will have a finished size of A4 will have a working area of 216mm x 303mm.

CMYK versus RGB color spectrum

Whereas monitors emit light, inked paper absorbs or reflects specific wavelengths. Cyan, magenta and yellow pigments serve as filters, subtracting varying degrees of red, green and blue from white light to produce a selective gamut of spectral colors. Like monitors, printing inks also produce a color gamut that is only a subset of the visible spectrum, although the range is not the same for both. Consequently, the same art displayed on a computer monitor may not match to that printed in a publication. Also, because printing processes such as offset lithography use CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) inks, digital art must be converted to CMYK color for print. Some printers prefer digital art files be supplied in the RGB color space with ICC profiles attached. Images can then be converted to the CMYK color space by the printer using color management methods that honor profiles if present; this helps preserve the best possible detail and vibrancy.

All print files should be setup as CMYK but please take into account that as the monitor is still working in RGB the colour you see on screen will not be accurate to the printed job.

Line Screen & Image Resolution

The simple formulas below will help you determine if your image has sufficient resolution for your print needs. The general rule of thumb is to have images with a resolution of 2 times the line screen.
133 lpi requires images at 266dpi (133 lpi x 2 = 266dpi)
150 lpi requires images at 300dpi (150 lpi x 2 = 300dpi)

These are the ideal Dpi ranges however a more simple rule of thumb is print files should be originated at 300Dpi but can have an absolute minimum of 150 Dpi which will obviously affect the finished quality of the print.

Paper sizes

A0 841 mm x 1189 mm
A1 594 mm x 841 mm
A2 420 mm x 594 mm
A3 297 mm x 420 mm
A4 210 mm 297 mm
A5 148 mm x 210 mm
A6 105 mm x 148 mm
A7 74 mm x 105 mm
A8 52 mm x 74 mm
A9 37 mm x 52 mm
A10 26 mm x 37 mm

Business Cards 85mm x 55mm (To fit in standard wallet)

File Formats

We can accept files in most formats but the preferred file format would always be a high resolution Acrobat PDF file with bleed, trim marks and a resolution of no less than 150Dpi. The file supplied is what will determine the quality of the end product so it is very important to get things right at this point.