No bleed area outside crop marks in PDF export

[JohnM77]

The attached screenshot shows the problem. The pink box is 4.25 inches by 6.25 inches, the blue-green box is 4 inches by 6 inches -- which is what I want for a 4 x 6 card. BUT when I export the file to a High Quality Print PDF, the bleed area outside the cut marks is gone -- so there is no bleed area. The office printing the card won't accept that. 

I have an M3 MacBook Pro with Sequoia 15.5.  What do I do???

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Do you have the bleed area and crop marks selected in the PDF settings?

[JohnM77]

Yes, .125” all around. I've tried every variation I can think of. I screen shared with Adobe phone support, and they watched while talked. 

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Not if your document has a bleed. Does your output settings have the bleed turned on and set properly. 

The High Quality Print PDF settings does not have them turned on automatically. Look under the Marks and Bleeds section of the PDF settings.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse · Accepted solution]

Something seem incorrect here. There are no page edges showing (usually black), and your cyan lines appear to be just guideline for margins. Also: Your zero point at top left should be on he top left corner of the actual page, not the bleed area as shown here.

Are you sure you defined bleed in your Document Setup?

 

[tonks_the_auror]

Hi,

I just want to check that you have the settings set up correctly.

You need to define the bleed in your InDesign document setup, and also in the PDF export settings.

[JohnM77]

Thank you all. I haven't used InDesign for a few years (and I never used it a lot) and I wasn't doing this right. And, I spent a considerable amount of time screen sharing with Adobe chat and phone support and we didn't get close to the answer. Thanks to this group, I have

• set  .125" bleeds all around in Document Setup
• changed the document size to 4 x 6 (not 4.25 x 6.25)

And it looks like I have what I want: 

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

That's better!  However, when you export your PDF, you don't need the bleed marks (the outer ones... printers don't need them at all), and the trim marks should be offset so they don't touch the corners of the artwork. The default is ually 6 pt (0.08333"), but printers would actually like it if it was more, so put 9 pt (0.125") in Offset.

Also, printers (I've worked for printers) do not need anything except the trim marks so you can deselect everything in Marks except for trim marks. In fact we don't REALLY need trim marks either, but it won't hurt to have them there. It's good visual reference.

[JohnM77]

Thank you, now I know what I did when I changed one setting from .0833 to O (with Adobe Support's approval btw). Just set it to .0125

None of the marks can hurt, can they?

In past week I've used Adobe screen share support 4 times. The first guy was really good -- knowledgable and fast. The next two knew very little and spent a lot of time looking for help in their database, without a lot of success. They told me Ilustrator uses bleeds but InDesign doesn't. The fourth was better, maybe because I switched to phone support, which sped up the process and made it easier for me to make a point. But he didn't know about the bleed settings in Document Setup and thought setting .0833 to 0 was fine.
So this forum has been great.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

"None of the marks can hurt, can they?"

Indeed, there's no harm. All good. They get cropped off anyway. 

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

>>>None of the marks can hurt, can they?

When in doubt--turn them all on! 😆

Besides setting your bleed to 0.125 inches or 9 pts, move the crop marks out by the same amount so they don't cut into the bleed area.