- What is bleed?
- What's the difference between CMYK & RGB images?
- Why do I need to supply CMYK artwork?
- What is resolution?
- What is the 'safe area'?
Bleed is the 'edge' of a piece of artwork that goes beyond the trim edges of the printed piece. It's important that backgrounds or images that touches the edge of the printed piece 'bleeds' outside of the trim line to make sure that when it's trimmed after print there is no risk of a white 'edge' appearing on the finished piece. We advise 3mm bleed on all artwork.
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RGB is the colour gamut used to display images on computer screen, and stands for Red, Green and Blue. CMYK is the colours gamut used for conventional printing, and stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black.
Colours display differently in RGB compared to CMYK.
To make sure your colour stays true to what you want, it is advised to change all images to CMYK before print, otherwise some colours may become duller when printed. See this diagram for an example.
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The RGB colour spectrum is much larger than CMYK, and if you supply artwork as RGB, what you receive when printed will differ to what you supplied. Bright colours will appear duller. Before you save your PDF file make sure you have converted it to CMYK so you will have a true indication of what it will look like when printed. See this diagram for an example.
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Resolution is a measure of the number of pixels, or dots at a given size that will determine the quality of the final printed piece, for instance 300 dpi (dots per inch). The bigger the number the better the image clarity, below 200 dpi isn't recommended for print.
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The safe area is the area close to the trim marks, where text or important information should ideally not be placed. There is always a small amount of movement during print finishing and keeping items off this safe area (approx. 3mm in from the edge) ensures that they don't accidentally get trimmed off.
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