How to add printer’s marks and bleeds in Illustrator

When you prepare artwork for printing, a number of marks are needed for the printer device to register the artwork elements precisely and verify correct color. You can add the following kinds of printer’s marks to your artwork:

Trim Marks

Fine (hairline) horizontal and vertical rules that define where the page should be trimmed. Trim marks can also help register (align) one color separation to another.

Registration Marks

Small targets outside the page area for aligning the different separations in a color document.

Color Bars

Small squares of color representing the CMYK inks and tints of gray (in 10% increments). Your service provider uses these marks to adjust ink density on the printing press.

Page Information

Labels the film with the name of the artboard number, the time and date of printout, the line screen used, the screen angle for the separation, and the color of each particular plate. These labels appear at the tops of the images.

Printer’s marks

A. Star target (not optional) B. Registration mark C. Page information D. Trim marks E. Color bar F. Tint bar

Choose File > Print.

Select Marks & Bleed on the left side of the Print dialog box.

Select the kinds of printer’s marks you want to add. You can also choose between Roman and Japanese-style marks.

(Optional) If you select Trim Marks, specify the width of trim-mark lines and the offset distance between the trim marks and the artwork.

Note:

To avoid drawing printer’s marks on a bleed, be sure to enter an Offset value greater than the Bleed value.

Bleed is the amount of artwork that falls outside of the printing bounding box, or outside the crop area and trim marks. You can include bleed in your artwork as a margin of error—to ensure that the ink is still printed to the edge of the page after the page is trimmed or that an image can be stripped into a keyline in a document. Once you create the artwork that extends into the bleed, you can use Illustrator to specify the extent of the bleed. Increasing the bleed makes Illustrator print more of the artwork that is located beyond the trim marks. The trim marks still define the same size printing bounding box, however.

The size of the bleed you use depends on its purpose. A press bleed (that is, an image that bleeds off the edge of the printed sheet) should be at least 18 points. If the bleed is to ensure that an image fits a keyline, it needs to be no more than 2 or 3 points. Your print shop can advise you on the size of the bleed necessary for your particular job.

Choose File > Print.

Select Marks & Bleed on the left side of the Print dialog box.

Do one of the following:

Enter values for Top, Left, Bottom, and Right to specify the placement of the bleed marks. Click the link icon to make all the values the same.
Select Use Document Bleed to use the bleed settings defined in the New Document dialog box.