Thursday, September 13, 2018

5. What is a Bleed?

Commercial printers usually want 1/4 inch of extra file size (called a bleed) to allow for cutting a large stack of cardstock. It would be almost impossible to cut exactly on the line between images so the cuts are made slightly inside the border of each card removing up to 1/8 inch of card.

The files have allowed for that extra bleed or what I call "cutoff."
Note the marks in the margin for the cutter.
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