Setting bleed area in adobe illustrator

Design & UX
1

hi,

i just started working with adobe illustrator.

i designed a postcard and now it has to be printed

so i have a question about setting bleed area for printing

my question is
if i design a 5x7 inches postcard and set the bleed on all 4 sides to .25inches

then the document size will become 5.5 x 7.5

Am i correct or do i need to include bleed area of .25inches of all sides in 5x7 inches

the bleed area should be inclusive in 5x7inches or extra in 5x7inches

thanks
vineet

2

Your art-board in Illustrator should remain at 5 x 7 to represent the extent of the finished cropped page. But do allow the design to overflow from those extents to create the bleed.
In this simple example the screen grab from Illustrator shows I have an art-board of 5 x 7, seen as the black rectangle with the design overflowing it.

800×556 22.9 KB

The next screen grab is taken from Acrobat after saving as a PDF with bleed set to 0.25" and crop marks visible to show the actual page edges.
915×666 4.78 KB

The rulers show that the actual document is about 8" wide to accommodate the bleed and crop marks. But the crop marks indicate that the actual page edges are 7 x 5 as defined by the art-board size in Illustrator.

2 Likes
3

thanks SamA74

for explaining with screenshots

it means it will be extra area.

vineet

4

The art-board in Illustrator will still only be 7 x 5, do not set the page larger. But do let the design overflow that area.

5

yes the artboard in illustrator will be 7x5

but
the PDF will be 7.5 x 5.5

am i correct
vineet

6

Yes, the exported PDF should resize itself to accommodate the bleed.

7

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