Setting my own exact margins

[sandral18706]

I'm sure there is an easy way to do this but I can't figure it out. I'm attaching a screenshot of a template created by a photo book company. Images and text should not extend beyond the pink lines--it is the safe art boundary. I added my own safe art boundary in the form of turquoise lines.

However, I cannot seem to make them equidistant from the red bleed lines lines. In other words, I want these turquoise boundaries to act as the pink ones do. I realize that the distance on the far left and far right isn't going to be the same in the distance in the book's gutter. But I want the turquoise lines to allow the page contents to look as "balanced" as possible. I've done a book like this before, and I use the turquoise lines as guides for my abutting the photographs and text boxes on the page. I suppose I could abut them against the pink lines but I'd rather not have things spread out so far.

I hope I am not confusing you. What I would like is for someone to tell me how to set up those turquoise lines, i.e. what numbers to type in above the ruler, in the X and Y boxes. I will use these pages as my master sheets. I've already done one draft of the book and I can see that it's all wrong. I tried to change the turquoise lines myself and they still don't seem right to me.

Is there an easy way to do this? I confess, I am not good with math or rulers or numbers. Thank you for your help!

[jmendesign]

The bleed lines are outside (and should be) of the layout, so their measurement should be negative (in my case I use 3 mm of bleed, so they have a value of -3).

With the master selected, go to layout>margins and columns, you can see the margin value and adjust its guides (turquoise blue) to the desired value. Just select the guide in question and enter the desired measurement in x (move left or right) and y (move up and down).

Is this what you wanted?

[sandral18706]

Thanks for replying. When I go to margins and columns, and click in the margin values, it moves the pink lines, not the turquoise ones.

This is sort of the answer I wanted. Another part of the problem is, I don't know what the measurements should be for the page to look "balanced."

[jmendesign]

Sorry. My bad. I wasn't clear in my answer. I should have said the blue ones are ruler lines and are the ones you can move using the x and y coordinates.

[ladyinblack1964]

Thanks very much! 

[sandral18706]

EDIT:  I think I have figured it out. I've mostly been eyeballing it to figure out the correct measurements.

[rob day]

Hi @sandral18706 ,The Document Setup sets the initial trim, bleed, slug, and margin guides. The margin guides can be customized for individual pages. The bleed and slug dimensions are a document setting:

[ladyinblack1964]

Thanks very much. The bleed, margins and trim were already set up by the photo book company (since I'm working in one of their templates). I just prefer to have my own margin (the turquoise lines) within their margins. I realize that I'm probably making extra work for myself, though, and it might be better to stay with their margins.