Printer’s marks and bleeds

When you prepare a document for printing, a number of marks are needed to help the printer determine where to trim the paper, align separation films when producing proofs, measure film for correct calibration and dot density, and so on. Selecting any page-mark option expands the page boundaries to accommodate printer’s marks, bleed (the parts of text or objects that extend past the page boundary to account for slight inaccuracy when trimming), or slug area (an area outside the page and bleed that contains printer instructions or job sign-off information).

If you are setting crop marks and want the artwork to contain a bleed or slug area, make sure that you extend the artwork past the crop marks to accommodate the bleed or slug. Also make sure that your media size is large enough to contain the page and any printer’s marks, bleeds, or the slug area. If a document doesn’t fit the media, you can control where items are clipped by using the Page Position option in the Setup area of the Print dialog box.

If you select the Crop Marks option, fold marks are printed as solid lines when spreads are printed.

Print the bleed or slug areas

Specify the bleed and slug areas in the Document Setup dialog box. The bleed and slug areas are discarded when the document is trimmed to its final page size. Objects outside the bleed or slug area (whichever extends farthest) are not printed.

When printing, you can override the default location for bleed marks in the Bleed And Slug area of the Marks And Bleed area.

Files saved in PostScript file format allow capable post-processing programs to implement their own variable bleed.

Marks and Bleed options

The Marks And Bleed area includes the following options:

Selects all printer’s marks including crop marks, bleed marks, registration marks, color bars, and page information.

Adds fine (hairline) horizontal and vertical rules that define where the page should be trimmed. Crop marks can also help register (align) one color separation to another. By using together with bleed marks, you can select overlapped marks.

Adds fine (hairline) rules that define the amount of extra area to image outside the defined page size.

Adds small “targets” outside the page area for aligning the different separations in a color document.

Adds small squares of color representing the CMYK inks and tints of gray (in 10% increments). Your service provider uses these marks to adjust ink density on the printing press.

Prints the filename, page number, current date and time, and color separation name in 6-point Helvetica in the lower-left corner of each sheet of paper or film. The Page Information option requires 0.5 inches (13mm) along the horizontal edge.

Please note that page information is printed in GothicBBB-Medium-83pv-RKSJ-H (Medium Gothic) font.

Lets you choose default printer’s marks or custom marks (for Japanese pages, for example). You can create custom printer’s marks or use custom marks created by another company.

Displays possible weights for crop and bleed mark lines.

Specifies how far from the edge of the page (not the bleed) InDesign will draw printer’s marks. By default, InDesign draws printer’s marks 6 points from the edge of the page. To avoid drawing printer’s marks on a bleed, be sure to enter an Offset value greater than the Bleed value.

Change the page position on the media

When you print a document to a cut-sheet media size that is larger than the document size, you can control where the slug and bleed areas, printer’s marks, and page fall on the media by using the Page Position options in the Setup area of the Print dialog box. If a document doesn’t fit the media and needs to be clipped, you can specify which part of the document is clipped. The preview image in the Print dialog box shows the results.