A question about marking bleed in PDFs for print
 

Good morning, folks, from Sunny Spain :)

A print on demand service has asked me to help them with their FAQ and I have a doubt I think you could answer rather easily.

They prefer to receive PDF. So far so good, but I am wondering in a general sense (not just for them) what would be best for somebody receiving PDFs from 'everywhere':

1. A PDF with the bleed marked just by means of TrimBox, BleeBox and all those data embeded into the PDF.

2. A PDF with bleed marked as 'traditional-style' crop marks and all that stuff (as if it were a colour proof, let's say).

Would you mind giving me your opinion and, if possible a hint of why?

I will get myself wet (ahem...) by diving into the pool first: I would prefer (2) because so I would be rather sure of what I am receiving as it happens that checking that TrimBox and BleedBox are properly set is a bit more difficult. And I have seen that using metric values (we are in Euro zone) is a bit tricky (you rarely get a real round value in mm.). Besides, it seems that some people find rather difficult to grasp the idea of marking geometry with something that cannot be seen (as crop marks can, I mean).

On the other side, I think automatic systems will benefit more from using internal values as TrimBox and BleedBox that would make much easier to position the pages properly.

So... being a designer myself and not a prepress person that uses imposition software (and who has no idea whatsoever about it but just being able to spell 'preps')... I dare to ask ;)

Thanks a lot in advance :)

I would consider the PDF market to be a mature market by this stage. As such Trim marks should no longer be necessary in any workflow. Trim marks' only real function is in a manual planning environment.

But the conservative industry that we work in are loathe to change, so we will be stuck with them for many years to come. :cry:

I don't have a problem with trim marks - they provide a visual representation of where the edge of the piece are, and you can very quickly and easily see if there is bleed beyond the marks. Designers have a hard enough time with things as it is - why make it more difficult by asking them to understand trim boxes? They work visually.

I also prefer PDF files with trim marks for the same reasons. I found that the visual aspect works more often than not (Oh, now I see what your talking about!). I've had this conversation more times than I needed to.

David

Pdfs with trims for me, I like seeing what I'm getting in advance, and I can always remove them if I like.

same here, pdf w/ crops please.