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ebheadrick1-Visitor
1-Visitor
April 16, 2010
Question

Bleed tabs

  • April 16, 2010
  • 13 replies
  • 2742 views

Hi,

I have my bleed tabs set up in a region that goes off the page. I was able to create one PDF that Iwas able toadded the crop marks and the bleed was off the page just like it is suppose to be.

BUT now I can't get the PDF to make the bleeds bleed. It must be a setting in the preflight or something like that in Acrobat, but it just isn't wanting to work for me. Anybody know the correct way for me to hold my mouth so these will come out? My hair is so thin I can't pull anymore out!

Thanks,
Ellen

    13 replies

    E
    ebheadrick1-VisitorAuthor
    1-Visitor
    April 16, 2010

    Another thought, is it a parameter in distiller I am missing?

    Thanks, Ellen

    P
    ptc-9539261-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    April 16, 2010
    My experience with bleed tabs is that most printers will not print off the page. Maybe you've found one that does, but none of ours do. So, the one book we publish with bleed tabs is sent to an outside printer. It is a 7 x 9 book and my layout makes it about a quarter inch wider so that it can be cut to produce true bleed tabs.

    Dave Hintz
    Siemens
    N
    naglists1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    April 16, 2010
    Some printers have a sideways print-path and are capable of bleeding. If you
    are generating a PDF that you are then printing on such a printer, you must
    use a print driver that supports printing to the edge. OR you must have a
    larger page that the printer clips. One of our documents is on a 9.5x12 page
    so, like David's 7x9, "true" bleed tabs can be produced by the printer. PDFs
    for this document, if printed with the right options in Acrobat, will bleed
    on sideways print-pathed printers.

    Having a 9.5x12 page in an 8x11 world is a pain. Changing to/from a 9.5x12
    page is much, much more of a pain. Even though we only deliver PDFs now, we
    have a post-PDF generation production step where we delete .5 from each side
    of the page.

    E
    ebheadrick1-VisitorAuthor
    1-Visitor
    April 19, 2010

    Hi,

    Maybe I am not explaining myself very well, which is not uncommon for me! I need to get the PDF to show the bleed tabs. With Acrobat you can increase the page size of your PDF and put in the cropmarks and registration marks for something like an offset printer. But even when I increase the page size the bleed tabs are still stopping at the edge of the virturalpage even though I know I have made the region off the page. I was able to create one of these PDFs showing the bleed off the page, but I am not sure which parameters I used and haven't been able to recreate it.

    Thanks,
    Ellen

    N
    naglists1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    April 19, 2010
    You mentioned Distiller earlier, so that is probably what you are using to
    generate your PDFs. Can you confirm this is true?

    Are you using Publishing Engine or Print Composer?

    What printer definition do you use when generating the PDF? (I forget the
    exact right way to ask this question, but the point is that Distiller makes
    PDFs that match the capabilities of the selected print driver. If the
    printer doesn't support color, for example, your PDF won't contain color.)
    Your print driver needs to support printing to the edge (presumably of an
    8.5x11 page). If it does not, your PDF won't get bleeds to the edge of the
    page.

    (There is a generic print driver, I forget what it's called, that is usually
    installed with Acrobat that is magic and does everything ... like support
    ridiculously large pages ... for weird situations. If you are not printing
    toward a specific printer, the one specified by your print shop, for
    example, that's probably the one you want.)

    Caveat: I last worked closely with Arbortext and Adobe when Acrobat was 5.x.
    Things may have changed since then!


    On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 7:07 PM, Ellen Headrick <ellen.headrick@jeppesen.com<br/>> wrote:

    > Hi,
    >
    > Maybe I am not explaining myself very well, which is not uncommon for me!
    > I need to get the PDF to show the bleed tabs. With Acrobat you can increase
    > the page size of your PDF and put in the cropmarks and registration marks
    > for something like an offset printer. But even when I increase the page
    > size the bleed tabs are still stopping at the edge of the virtural page even
    > though I know I have made the region off the page. I was able to create one
    > of these PDFs showing the bleed off the page, but I am not sure which
    > parameters I used and haven't been able to recreate it.
    >
    > Thanks,
    > Ellen
    >
    A
    AndyEsslinger1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    April 19, 2010
    Windows 5.1, SP3, Arbortext or Epic Editor (versions 4.1.1, 4.2.1, 4.2.3, 4.3.1b, 4.4b, 4.4e, 4.4k, 5.1A, 5.1C, 5.1F, 5.3m040) with print composer option (set usedistiller="on" in instance.acl file).

    I have some edge-to-edge graphics in my doctypes. I found it necessary to select the Adobe Acrobat Distiller (Adobe PDF in newer versions) as the print driver when using these doctypes. Otherwise there is always a problem with either long-edge the or short-edge not printing to the edge of page..

    For draft quality almost any PostScropt printer works, but for exact printing I have to compose with the distiller driver as default.printer.

    -Andy
    \ / Andy Esslinger LM Aero - Tech Order Data
    _____-/\-_____ (817) 279-0442 1 Lockheed Blvd, Mail Zone 4285
    \_\/_/ (817) 777 3047 Fort Worth, TX 76108

    P
    ptc-9539261-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    April 19, 2010
    I believe the generic print driver is "Adobe PDF", at least with Acrobat 7 and newer. With Acrobat 5, it was "Acrobat Distiller".
    E
    ebheadrick1-VisitorAuthor
    1-Visitor
    April 19, 2010
    Yes Distiller with PE. I have given up with Acrobat and I increased the page size in the FOSI.

    Ellen
    P
    ptc-19080751-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    April 19, 2010
    Ellen,

    Does Preview show what you want? Note that you have to specify View->Extended Pages in Preview in order to see what is outside the page dimensions.

    Also, are the crop marks coded in the FOSI? Or are you selecting Crop Marks in the print dialog?

    Suzanne Napoleon
    "WYSIWYG is last-century technology!"
    www.FOSIexpert.com


    E
    ebheadrick1-VisitorAuthor
    1-Visitor
    May 12, 2010

    Suzanne,

    I finall got back to this. To get the document out I increased the page size then used Acrobat to trim the extra off and add the crop marks so that the bleed was off the page.

    I just did a Print Preview and the extended page view on my next project that has bleed tabs. And yes the bleed tab is off the page just like I thought it was. But when you run this file through PE and distiller something cuts it off so that even when you extend the page size in Acrobat those bleed tabs are not off the page. So agin that leads me to a distiller setting, but I haven't found any information about those even on the Adobe site.

    Ellen

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