What is Bleed in Printing?

Printing with Bleed? Or Full Bleed Or No Bleed, Sound Familiar?

differences-between-bleed-trim-safe-area

Where you ask to design a file that contains bleed in printing? In the printing industry, there is a term called “Bleeding” to refer to a specific tactic. Bleeding mostly means “no borders”. For bleeding the design wich is going to be printed, the designer needs to extend the canvas an additional 0.25″ (1/4 of an inch) vertically and horizontally. This extra space is not used for text or important data as it’s going to be Trimmed off (cut) just to create the effect as if the product was printed all the way to the edge with no borders.

Bleed is mostly used to extend the background of the image further away just about a quarter-inch further than where the cutting line goes. For images with no backgrounds, we also see stripes, lines fade or even segments of the designs like “line dividers” that cross all over the printed product.

youtu.be/txRWmguL7KY

Full Bleed is the actual term used most of the time to indicate that the printing will go all the way to the border. People already simplified the “Full Bleed” words to just use the word “Bleed” to replace it.

Each country has its own natural bleeding techquines:

bleeds_explained

For each country and printer company, the different bleed requirement may be required. This information may be found at the printer’s website or by downloading pre-set-up templates.

Online USA: For the online market we tend to see 0.25″ bleed mark as the standard to allow broader range and compatibility with almost any printing press and design team.

Local USA: For old times designers and old-school print stores, requirements are for 1/8 of an inch (0.125″) as the preferred bleed minimum requirement. All printers are capable of managing this amount of bleed, but still, online printers rather bigger bleed areas.

Europe: Within Eastern printing market we see a wider range of acceptance for bleed as they require all the way from 2mm up to 5mm on the design file. This varies a lot from one printer to another with no exact reason.

 

 

 

Bleeding Technique

sample for crop bleed printed page

Bleeding is mostly based on the visual illusion that your printed product was printed all the way to the edge of the paper. There are printers with this sort of capabilities, no doubt about it. But the technique of bleeding won’t stop there, people will ask for this service on every level of the print chain. From color copies to business cards, people love to have them bled all the way to the corner. Sometimes bleeding comes with an extra cost, it might be losing the space which is being trimmed of; another way to lose. Your printer will charge you some extra bucks to have your print out trimmed off to the edge. Last but not least, your print order could de be delayed for some extra hours or days if you request them to bleed it for you.

Most products in the market are already quoted to contain the bleeding. So the price already contemplates the possibility of full bleeding in your art with no additional charges and no additional turnaround to your print order. If you look to any of the prime online printers in the market like VistaPrint or 55printing, you will notice that there is no mention on extra cost or extra cutting time for bleeding designs except for the cheap color copies by 55printing.com that requires extra steps to bleed out.

Printers With Bleeding Capabilities (borderless)

borderless-full-bleed-printers-

 

During these few past years, the need for full-bleed printing has been increasing dramatically. Consumers don’t like the white border in their print outs anymore. Looks unfinished and out of touch for most of the applications, consumers needed a way to replicate full bleeding in some way.

  • Trimmer: First choice was to buy a home trimmer to cut off the white edge out of the printed paper. Sounds good but, will you trim each page, each photo off? It could take you hours to do so manually. Also, cutting might not be just perfect and you will end up re-printing it for a second try.
  • Ordering Trimming at a Print Shop: Print shops are no cheap, extra services like trimming might cost an extra couple of bucks as well. So this is not the most practical way to go about trimming your print outs.
  • Buy a Home Printer: We saw it first in 2006 with an Epson printer that was offering borderless (full bleed) printing right off the bat. The technology was still very new back then and many errors and flaws would come in consequence to this. Now, about 15 years later, this technology has grown and perfected to a way you won’t have to worry about it. Home printers like the Canon PIXMA G1010 will do the job for you just right, every time!

A Little More About The Inkjet Canon PIXMA G1010

This Canon printer is among the most popular home-based, high volume printers that support many capabilities to make your life easier as we are about to enumerate here:

  1. Refillable Cartridges: The design allows easy to watch ink levels, you notice as soon as the levels are going down just from in front of the printer. Then you may proceed to re-fill it as you wish. No need to go buy additional ink cartridges for this.
  2. Non-Spillable Refills: You can buy ink by bulk, these little refillable bottles come with a technology that you will not create any mess around the printer or your table.
  3. Borderless Printing (Full Bleed): This printer allows borderless printing on images and paper smaller than the bay size. For example, you can feed the printer with picture or postcard size glossy paper (4″ x 6″) and it will print it all the to the border with no issues.
  4. High Volume Prints: This printer comes for higher volume capabilities, recommended to use for printing jobs between 150 and 1,500 sheets at a time. No overheating, no paper jamming, no issues for this sort of volume. If you increase the paperweight, allow extra rest time between print-outs.
  5. Ink Will Not Smudge on Glossy Paper: Often seen when you use not a compatible glossy paper on home-based inkjet printers. The ink will just drip off and smudge out of the glossy paper causing real chaos. This printer is compatible with a wider range of glossy paper to avoid ink smudge for the most part.

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Printing With Bleed? Full Bleed Terminology Explained

Everything That You Need To Know About Full Bleed Printing

Are you new to the world of printing? If not, you must be well-aware of the fact that bleeding forms an important concept. If one comes across a file that contains full-bleed in printing, it might signify that bleed has been included across all the four sides of a document.

When a document doesn’t have any border, it is known as full bleeding. To bleed the design that is going to be printed, designers are required to expand the canvas by 1/4th of an inch, both horizontally and vertically. Well, this extra space isn’t used for printing any text or data. It’s because printers would cut down the size later on. It would help to create an impression as if the file has been printed without any kind of borders.

What Is Bleed?

none full bleed sample
none full bleed sample

The term bleed is associated with the printing industry. It is referred to when a document doesn’t contain any borders. Basically, it has to do with the edges of a paper. It also involves the way a file is printed and it is being cut.

Printers are known to grab each sheet of paper by its edges. This is done to put the paper through the printer based on certain alignment. One thing that must be kept in mind is professional printing service providers should print a large sheet of paper than required. Once it is printed, the paper must be trimmed. Often when an artwork is of the exact size of the finished product, it is possible to make a small shift during trimming.

When Is Bleed Mostly Used?

Bleeding is mostly used to widen the image background even more and keeping just a quarter-inch more than the cutting line. In case, one comes across an image without any background, stripes might be visible. Usually, these faded lines or line dividers are sometimes visible all over the product that has been printed.


Often the term ‘full bleed’ is used interchangeably with ‘full bleed’. It tries to point out that the process of printing might go all the way to the border.

Ways to Apply Bleed

sample for full bleed printed table
sample for full bleed printed table

Well, bleeding depends on the visual illusion that it creates. It creates the impression that the printed product was printed in such a way that it reaches the edge of the paper. One gets to see many printers in the market, which comes with this capability. No matter how significant the printers might be, clients would ask for bleeding service, during every level of the print process.

Whether a business is planning to print business cards or color copies, customers love to see bleeds an all corners. Bleeding comes with some added cost. However, bleeding can trim down a bit of space which is very important.

Whenever you are thinking of getting your print trimmed off the edge with the help of a printer, it might cost some extra bucks. Moreover, the print order can get delayed for days when one tries to full-bleed an image by themselves.


Different Bleeding Techniques

What’s surprising is that each nation and printing company follows a different bleeding requirement. Customers can easily find it from any website. For instance, the online USA market follows a 0.25” bleed mark. It is the standard to provide an expanded range and compatibility with the help of any printing press.

In the European market, one gets to see a wide range of acceptance for bleed. On the design file, it needs only 2mm up to 5 mm.


Printers Have full Bleeding Abilities

Often when businesses look for a good printing company, they will come across many companies like 55printing or VistaPrint. Most of these printing companies being professional know their job very well. They won’t charge any extra penny for bleeding the designs of a file.

Businesses that are on the lookout of full-bleed printing must be well-aware of the fact that the demand for bleeding has increased hugely. Studies have shown that they don’t like white borders in prints. After all, white borders in a print might look a bit unprofessional and unfinished. So if customers need to reproduce full-bleeding within a print, the following steps should be followed. They are:

Trimmer

Customers can buy home trimmers in order to cut down the white edge of the printed paper. It might sound interesting. However, is it possible to trim every photo or page? Well, it can take a long time to trim the edges and it might not be in a proper form. It might often lead to reprinting for another time. Hence, it’s advisable to take the help of a printing company that can trim the files easily.

Order Trimming From a Professional

Print shops can charge you an exorbitant amount. It’s always advisable to go for a printing company that offers to bleed and cutting at an affordable rate.

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