PDF crop marks and bleed: correct file preparation for professional printing

What is bleed?

Bleed is a margin of 3–5 mm around your design that extends beyond the final cut line. There are always small variations when cutting. Without bleed, white edges appear at the edge of your printed material. Almost all printers require a minimum of 3 mm bleed.

Adding crop marks

Crop marks are the small lines in the corners of the printed sheet that show the operator where to cut. In professional design applications (InDesign, Illustrator) you add crop marks when exporting as PDF. Always supply with crop marks unless the printer explicitly asks otherwise.

Safe zone for text and images

Keep all text and important elements at least 5 mm from the final cut line. This is the "safe zone" — there is no risk of text being cut off here due to small cutting variations. Images may extend to the bleed edge, but logos and text should not.

PDF-X format for print

PDF-X is the ISO standard for graphic interchange. PDF-X/1a is suitable for CMYK offset printing. PDF-X/3 also supports RGB and ICC colour profiles. Ask your printer which PDF-X variant they accept. Most modern printers work with PDF-X/4.

Colour: CMYK versus RGB

Screens use RGB colour (red, green, blue). Printers use CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black). An RGB image converted to CMYK may look slightly different. Let the design application handle the colour conversion for the most predictable result, not the printer.

Cropping PDF for adjustment

Received a PDF without correct margins or with too much whitespace? PDFrust's crop tool lets you specify exactly which part of the page should remain visible. Useful for adjusting third-party PDF files before forwarding to the printer.

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