Crop marks and white space around edge of pdf

[Theo331728749dq2]

I add crop marks during pdf export.

Is there a way to add white space around the edges of a pdf without the actual crop marks?

I may choose to leave some white space around the exterior during cropping because I liked the way it looks

, but with crop marks the actual crop mark lines will be visible if I leave any white around the edges.

[Steve Werner]

I would change to cropping to add the white space around the art. Then create the PDF without crop marks.

If you need the crop marks for the printer, create them manually.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Why not just add the white margin as bleed in the layout, and then you can export with or without it?

[Theo331728749dq2]

How would I do this? I tried going to FILE, DOCUMent SETUP, BLEED but this does nothing to the exported pdf?

[rob day · Accepted solution]

Hi @Theo331728749dq2 , You can include the document’s slug, which can be larger than the bleed:

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

This might be more organic than I was thinking:

• Set doc bleed to preferred margin size (0.25-1 in);
• Lay a rectangle of bleed size, on its own layer, shuffled to bottom, colored white. Lock layer.

Now an export with bleeds will have that white margin; choice of auto or manual crop marks is up to OP.

Not seeing any difference between bleed and slug (thought there might be a size limit for bleed, or that slug might be automatically white, but neither seems to be the case). Several ways to do this but I think all will require manual crop marks to get the exact effect desired.

[rob day]

Several ways to do this but I think all will require manual crop marks to get the exact effect desired.

The cropmarks in my example are not manual, I also didn’t add any page items to the document to get the whitespace outside of the PDF’s bleed and crop. See attached document

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Ah, I should have finished my experimenting. Both bleed and slug will create a white margin if nothing else is defined there.

And yes, you can turn the various marks on and off, but the OP seems a bit fussy about exactly where they appear, and the export adjustments may or may not meet those demands. Hence, manual marks may be needed for an exact result.

[rob day]

but with crop marks the actual crop mark lines will be visible if I leave any white around the edges.

Now I’m not sure I’m completely understanding the question—does @Theo331728749dq2 want crop marks included or not?

You could export with a bleed and slug but no marks. In that case you get a document bleed with a border around the bleed, but no marks. Here I have my Acrobat page Display Preference showing bleed and trim boxes.

[Peter Spier]

You really have two questions here...

For the white space I would add a Slug allowance in the document setup and include the slug in the xport settings.

If you dont want the crtops to show (and the default crop marks are waay too close to the trim edge) increase the offset. Crop marks shoud ALWAYS have a minimum offset equal to the bleed allowance so they fall outside the bleed area, and more is not a problem.

[Theo331728749dq2]

 I basically wanted the option to print with white space without having crop marks.

Robs' suggestion worked best and was easy to implement.