Marks & bleed¶
A quick reference for the printer's marks and the bleed/gutter terms used throughout the guides.
Bleed¶
Bleed is artwork extended beyond the trim edge so that, after cutting, no white slivers appear. A common value is 3 mm on each edge. Your bleed in Imposio should match the bleed the artwork was created with.
Generate bleed¶
Customer file delivered without bleed? Pages → Generate Bleed builds a bleed frame from
the artwork's own edge: mirror the edge, extend the colour trend, repeat the last pixel row,
or fill with a solid colour (prefilled with the average edge colour), with an optional soften
(blur). Only the added frame is rasterised — the page itself stays vector — and the trim and
bleed boxes are set so imposition crops it correctly. Pages that already have bleed are
skipped. Undoable, and scriptable as doc.generateBleed.
Trim and safe area¶
- Trim is the finished edge — where the cutter trims.
- Safe area is a margin inside the trim where important content (text, logos) should stay, because cutting drifts by a millimetre or two.
Crop / cut marks¶
Crop marks (or cut marks) are short lines at the corners showing where to trim. Neighbouring pieces (e.g. business cards) can share cut marks to save space.
Registration marks¶
Registration marks (the target/bullseye symbol) let the press align each ink so colours sit exactly on top of each other, and help finishing line things up.
Fold marks¶
Fold marks — usually dotted lines — show the folder where to crease. Used for leaflets and for folding signatures in book work.
Gutter¶
The gutter is the space at the binding edge. Saddle-stitch needs little or none; perfect-bound work needs more so content isn't lost in the glue. For N-up jobs, the gutter is the space between pieces for the cut.
Slug (optional)¶
A slug is an area outside the bleed for job info, colour bars and instructions. It's trimmed off and is not part of the finished piece.
See these in action in the guides.