What is bleed?
Bleed is an extra border around the document where the design continues. This extra part can be cut off after printing to make prints without any white edges. Bleed is therefore only useful for documents that need to be printed "borderless".
Example of a document with bleed
The space between the black and red lines is bleed. When a small deviation occurs during the cutting of the prints, this extra space ensures that there will be no white edges.
Borderless printing without bleed
Documents without bleed can also be printed without borders. In that case, the document is enlarged slightly to create the extra space that is needed. Only when it is crucial that the document maintains its exact size, adding bleed to the document is necessary to get borderless prints.
Adding bleed to your document
Adobe Illustrator or Adobe InDesign can be used to add bleed to your document. You can find out how to do this in Illustrator by clicking here. If you want to use InDesign to add bleed, you can find out how to do that here.
