Setting bleed

For professional printing, bleed extends the printable area beyond the page edge to allow artwork to be trimmed. You can set bleed distances, display bleed guides (so you can more easily design into the bleed area) and then include bleed at export time.

Bleed guides

3 mm bleed guides with a placed image snapped to them.

To allow for inaccuracies in the trimming process in professional printing, it's a good idea to extend these elements beyond the 'trim edge' (TrimBox), i.e. the page dimensions defined in Document Setup.

Bleed guides are a visual aid only. They assist you in positioning 'bleed' elements (typically images) that you want to run to the edge of a trimmed page. With bleed guides switched on, you can display the printable area extended by the Bleed distance(s) you specify.

The Include bleed setting in the Export dialog includes the bleed area in the actual output page size.

Bleed on output

Bleed enabled on PDF export, extending over crop marks.

For single pages, the terms 'Left' and 'Right' bleed are used, while for facing-page spreads the terms 'Inner' and 'Outer' are used. For the latter, Inner bleed is only relevant for first and last single pages or when exporting (printing) as single pages (rather than spreads).

To set bleed for a new document:
Document Menu To modify your bleed settings:
  1. From the Document menu, select Document Setup.
  2. In the Bleed section on the right, do one of the following:
    • For the same bleed value on all page edges, enable Uniform (the link symbol to the right), and then set any bleed value.
    • For different bleed values on pages edges, disable Uniform (the link symbol to the right), and then set Left/Inner, Right/Outer, Top and Bottom bleed values.
  3. Tap OK.
Document Menu To view bleed guides:

The guides are shown as a red outline that extends beyond the page edges by the chosen Bleed values.

To change the colour of bleed guides:
Document Menu To snap objects to bleed guides:

The Snap to spread option snaps to page edge and bleed equally.

Document Menu To switch on bleed marks on export:

Do one of the following:

  1. From the Document menu, select Export.
  2. Choose a file format to export, e.g. PDF.
  3. Enable Include bleed. See Export Settings for which file formats support bleed.

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