bleeds and crops for prepress

[Pixelchik]

I am creating an magazine ad layout and my page size is about 1/4 inch larger than the actual trim size of the ad to allow for bleed. I have manually created crop marks. Is there a better way to accomplish this to ensure proper placement and crops for the magazine? I usually use QuarkXpress or Pagemaker for ads, but the magazine wants only Photoshop files.

[cybrghst]

When you print, In quark, click on the document tab in the print window, hit the registration tab and turn them on centered. Dont worry about putting them on your page, as long as everything is centered it will print with registration marks if you select them in the print dialog box. Also directly across from the registratin box is bleed, put .125 there also..

In pagemaker, it is in the same print dialog box, except it is under paper, check the boxes there. Once again you dont need to put them on your page manually. Just centered everything make you bleed, .125 not a .25. No need for a .25 inch.

btw welcome to the cafe. Good luck

[Phil_The_Rodent]

Strange. No, manual should be fine. The crop marks should not touch the bleed area, so there will be extra canvas behind the bleed area. I think the easiest way is to make another background layer behind you current one , increase the canvas size by say an inch (making sure your background colour is white), and on this background layer, slide in your guides and select lines with the line marquees and stroke them (Edit:Stroke). I assume that the magazine wants to make sure that there's no trouble with importing your Quark file. Save the final as a CMYK tiff.

[cybrghst]

Sorry didnt catch that last part about ps. Why would they only except photoshop files. IF you are making them for print, your files will be HUGE. I cannot believe they wont except PDF files. If this this is the case just make your image a 1/8 bigger with guides, the mag will insert that file into a page layout program and will see the bleed. If you tell them it bleeds they will see you have enough for that.

wow, fingers tired. good luck

[Pixelchik]

Thanks for the tip...I knew it was too easy.

[cybrghst]

Phil sent me a note, so i want to justify this, dont send original psd file. Send a .tiff, also about guides those are just for you bleeds to make sure you have them right. Sorry if there was any confusion...