🚀 go-pugleaf

Ariel,

To add to Bob's comments...

Standard bleed is 1/8" or 3 mm for this type of printing. Any printer worth dealing with can trim accurately to that fairly generous dimension. If he can't, he's a slob -- look elsewhere as he is likely to be sloppy in the rest of the job.

For this job, if your page is 29.7 x 21 cm, that is exactly the size you set up in your page layout app. The bleed portion of your art is extended 3 mm beyond that trim size.

But, the trim (crop) marks and registration marks, color bars and other marginalia are generated automatically by your printer when he outputs the job. There are few times I manually add cropmarks, the most frequent being for ganged-up business cards, note pads, and mailing labels.

Offhand, I'd say that the only time a printer will print onto exact-size sheets is when there is no bleed or multicolor registration issue, the volume is low (as can be with digital printing), and he is printing one-up. Other work will typically be on oversize sheets for the reasons cited in the paragraph above, and trimmed down. The trimmed-off scrap can be recycled.

Also, prepare your journal pages in InDesign or QuarkXPress in reading spreads. Let your printer do any page imposition.

Neil