Bleed on already finished PDF

[RMCrawley]

Hi,

I have a pdf that a colleague of mine completed. They sent it to the printer without bleed and the printer needs this.

Dropbox - Hawkesbury River Experience Itinerary.pdf

Really need help to put a bleed on this of 3mm.

I go to, 'set page boxes' 'add printer mark's '

I just can't seem to export it showing any results. It just saves as normal with no bleed marks.

I know that with Illustrator when I save as PDF I can physically see the bleed. This has been made in Adobe PDF DC

thanks for any help.

Matty

[Dov Isaacs · Accepted solution]

This was apparently originally a Word document with content pasted in. It appears to be an A4-size document with content going to the edges. To properly print something like this, you need to extend that content beyond the A4 page edges into a bleed area that can be printed and then trimmed off by the printer.

Microsoft Word does not support the concept of bleed. It is a word processing program, not a professional layout program. The best you can do is to “fake” bleed by creating a Word document that is larger than A4 by at least 3mm in all directions, having the content that touches the edges extend out into the bleed area, create the PDF, and then finagle the bleed box parameters with the Prepress Tools.

          - Dov

[RMCrawley]

Thank you for your help and advice.

These images are garbage you are right. I am beginning the project again for her and going to use adobe stock to replace what she got off google images.

I'll begin the project in illustrator or indesign and with a bleed from the start.

I'm kind of happy now that I know why I could just not simply add a bleed in adobe pdf.

I appreciate everyone's time here.

[Abambo]

For any project you cannot use “Google images”, if they are not specifically licensed for “free use”. It seams to me, that this project was quite taken to lightly by an inexperienced designer.

I hope for you that you have access to a decent desk top publishing program. It does nit necessaryly be Indesign but it should not be Microsoft Word. When designing in Word and the same design in Indesign, even a layman sees the difference.

[Abambo]

Bleed can't be created like tat on the fly. As Dov Isaacs​ correctly laid out, with Word, the only way to create kind of bleed is to make the pages larger for the bleed size. In addition, and that is true for all lay outs, the content needs to extend to that bleed.

Looking at the very first page, I see data that even does not extend to the current border.

Also the quality of the pictures is surly not high enough for good quality printing. Some of the pictures are from highly compressed JPEG images and /or are not in a resolution high enough to produce legible text.

Now, what are your options:

• You could redo the work and typeset correctly the pages, at least for those where the text will be hardly readable.
• Your new design will be done in a program like Indesign or at least in a page size of 210+6 x 297+6 (A4+3mm bleed).
• All Text and graphics needs to take into account, that inside of those 3 mm margin+a certain safe area (my printer asks for 4 mm at least) no important information should be placed.
• You export your data using high resolution settings for the Adobe PDF creation. Acrobat comes with predefined settings, I think one of them is called "print quality".

or

• You are aware of the fact that the quality of the brochure will be suboptimal.
• Your customer is OK with that quality.
• You check your design to see if all pages can afford the loss of a mm or two at the borders.
• You speak to your printer, that the final trim size will be 2-4 mm shorter then the A4 design.
• You set the trimming/bleed boxes with Acrobat DC accordingly. Trim marks are not necessarily needed. One of my printers for example insists that you do not add the marks. The design, however, needs to include 2 mm bleed.

[Stephen Marsh]

Glad that you can start the project over again.

For those without such luxury that need to (try to) turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse:

How to fix PDF bleed problems with PitStop Pro | Enfocus

PDF bleed: why is it so important? | Enfocus

Detect missing bleed and fix it with PitStop Pro 13 - YouTube

[Abambo]

Stephen_A_Marsh  wrote

Glad that you can start the project over again.

For those without such luxury that need to (try to) turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse:

Even that Pitstop is an interesting tool, it can't provide data that's simply not available.

[Luke Jennings]

Actually, the PitStop action to add bleed does add data by mirroring a strip of image and adding it to the bleed area. (a twist on an old Photoshop trick). It's not perfect and occasionally looks odd, like when the image ends with a diagonal line or a circle. I did need to first increase the image size with PitStop, to eliminate the white gap, before applying the PitStop add bleed fix, and used my own edited version of the action that also adds a trim box. The green line is showing the trim line, the area beyond it is a mirrored image, creating bleed.

All of the above suggestions are preferable to using PitStop, I just wanted to show that it can be a useful (although expensive) tool.

[Abambo]

In that case Pitstop may be a lifesaver.

[RMCrawley]

oh yeah, I see what you mean. interesting.

[Stephen Marsh]

PitStop would be an expensive tool if purchased to simply add bleed to poorly generated artwork for a single project. There is a fully functional 30 day demo that could be used for a one off project. The great thing about PitStop Pro or Server is that it can do so many things that are hard or impossible to do with Acrobat Pro alone. Anybody that is handling PDF files as their primary source of input needs serious PDF tools, starting with Acrobat Pro, but often adding PitStop Pro or other similar tools or full fledged PDF workflow tools from prepress workflow companies etc.