The easiest way to visualize bleed or trim areas for art files is to download one of our PDF templates. The lines within the document displays the extended area we need in order to cut down a quality final print product.

To learn more about what bleed is, visit this page. Understanding bleed and trim area does seem to confuse some people – even designers.

Truly, not all of us our designers so talking about “bleed” area may sound alien. To add to the confusion, different designers may provide different bleed measurements. To make matters worse, some graphic designers may not provide bleed at all.

If you are a designer and understand how start out a canvas area.25″ larger than the print size while keeping important text or images away from the edges, you are probably in good shape. For instance, a 4×6 postcard file should be sized 4.25×6.25, a 11×17 flyer should be 11.25×17.25 and so on.

If you are not a designer, then we can help. In most cases, our print department will automatically add bleed to artwork. Most of the time, we do not even inform customers there are bleed issues, but understanding that trim area is essential for people who print items on a recurring basis.

Here are some demonstrations for designer vets and novices who use Photoshop and need help adding bleed to their flattened files.

Fixing Bleed – Simply Resize the Art

In this first video, we simply change the size of an 11×17 file to 11.25×17.25. The original designer left enough space between essential content and the edges.

Fixing Bleed – Text Way Too Close to Edges

If you have a flattened file where the text is way too close to the edge, this video may help. You cannot just enlarge the art since the text will always be in the cut area.

Fixing Bleed – Using Transform Tool

This next video showcases how bleed can be adjusted using the awesome transform tool in Photoshop.

In the end, there are many ways to adjust artwork for bleed. It is usually easier to ask the original artist to add bleed area before turning the file over to a commercial printer like us. However, there is no need to panic. Our staff will fix bleed automatically for customers, but we still think showing some recovery processes may prove valuable to some customers.

We occasionally add support videos to our YouTube channel. Please let us know if there are any videos you would like us to add. We want to provide as much information as we can to make the entire online printing process easy and enjoyable.