[Iamanamma]

What is "full bleed?"

[stuartpurple]

Full bleed is when the colour runs off the side of the cropped sheet as opposed to stopping at the edge. This is to allow a tolerance in post press cropping. All you do is add 2 or 3 mm to a colour that you want running off the edge of the page. Most PostScript rip engines and printers allow this and give you crop and bleed marks. However, if all you do is add the bleed, when the proofs are produced, all that will be there. Don't worry, it's nothing to do with horrible scalpel accidents over artwork. Any printer will sort that out. Mine does, I just run the colour over the edge.
Hope this is a little enlightening.
Stu. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[Iamanamma]

So, if I want to print a flier with my pictures going all the way to the edge with no white border, I would want to print them on a printer that does "full bleed?" Having the ink go past the edges of the paper would guarantee that even if the alignment was slighty off, I would have color all the way to the edges? ( I am very very new at this.)

[stuartpurple]

In a nutshell.
Are you printing the flyers yourself, or are they being outsourced to a printer?
If it is the former, you need to make sure that the fliers can indeed be printed on a larger sheet. I notice on another thread that you have a Tabloid printer at your disposal. If you have set up more than one-up on a printed page, make sure that there is no gap in between. (it really saves time cropping them). That said, if the colour is different of opposing sides, there are clever ways around that to avoid spill over (that's when unwanted colours bleed onto a copy from the adjoining copy). Measure the paper and allow at lease an inch margin all round, also make sure that when ripping to position the print centrally on the page.
If outsourcing, just save it with the over flowed edges and send it to the printer as is. Don't forget to tell him first that there is a bleed to contend with (it makes a difference to some).
Being new to something isn't a bad thing. When I was learning this, there were no forums on the internet for these things. That was a long slow process.
Stu.

[Iamanamma]

Stu, you rank with the MacWorld greats. You have been more than a little helpful.
The HP4MV is monochrome, and we use it to print our pricing brochures which only take up one piece of tabloid size paper each, and have blank margins.
All the bleed questions have to do with a single sided US letter size flier we're putting together for a new product we want to advertise. The market is not large, and taking the job to a printer was prohibitively costly for such a small run. We bought an Epson Stylus Photo 890 because it advertised "edge to edge" printing and "full bleed." The photos and artwork need to go all the way to the edges of paper, so we hoped this printer could would suffice for our small runs. My boss has been attempting to do the printing, and has been having trouble with white margins showing up. I wanted to know if I understood what "full bleed" meant. I didn't, and thanks to your help, now I do.
Thanks for being so understanding. Everyone on these forums is really nice, but so many are so experienced, they take for granted things that are major revelations for me. Bless you!

[stuartpurple]

Pleasure to be of assistance. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
Stu.