🚀 go-pugleaf

Ariel,

Unless there are extenuating circumstances, 3 mm bleed should be all that's needed. We use 1/8" in the States, and all jobs I've done for printing overseas have had either 1/8" or 3 mm allowed for bleeds. Just extend the background, photos, rules, or whatever is to bleed, 3 mm beyond the trim edges of the pages. For example, if the trim size is 28 x 20 cm (I assume this is 28 cm wide), and I want an overall color background, I'd create a box 283 x 206 mm, place it on the page. It would align on the center fold, and extend 3 mm off the page on the opposite side, top and bottom.

When you speak to your printer, you have to tell him the specs anyway. He'll want to know the size, color, stock, and whether or not you have bleeds so he knows how to lay out the job for printing -- such as whether he can butt pages together, or whether he has to provide a gutter between for the bleeds.

No need to manually add crop marks -- they are automatically generated. You can even see this for yourself if you check "add crop marks" (or similar, in the print setup dialog boxes) which should add crop marks, register marks, file name, date and time in the margins to a proof off your laser printer or inkjet and print to an oversize sheet of paper. This is essentially what your printer will do.

Neil