Portfolio Printing Advice

Alexi

New Member
Hello everyone!

First time poster who needs a bit of helpful advice regarding a personal portfolio I'm finalising to print.

I'd like to start off by stating that I have limited experience with Indesign (which I am using to prepare this) and 'presentational' printing so my question may seem a tad idiotic!

The portfolio will be A3 in format so I have used A3 standard page layout with a 5mm bleed and crop marks.
Following a test print run, the printer company I'm using mentioned that I would need oversized A3 instead of standard - as with the crop marks/bleed would mean the content on the page would be scaled smaller.
Is there a way to solve this without using oversized paper and having to have it trimmed (to keep costs down)?
Could I just remove the crop marks and keep the bleed to ensure the content on the paper prints to the edge of the standard A3 paper?

Apologies if this is a simple, straightforward query - it would help me greatly if you could give me some advice.

Many thanks.

Alex
 
Could I just remove the crop marks and keep the bleed to ensure the content on the paper prints to the edge of the standard A3 paper?


That's not really how it works, since you'll be printing off the edge of the sheet and I doubt the printer will be too happy about that!

You could potentially get around the issue by not bleeding any content off the page in your design so you don't need to crop anything off when it's printed. Essentially you'd be adding a white border around the edge but you wouldn't need any trimming so could get away with a standard size.

Speak to your printer though, they're best placed to advise since they're the ones printing the job.

 
Thanks for the advice Paul, I appreciate the explanation!

To be honest, there are a number of pages where I have colour visuals or a shaded areas located running off the edge - in these instances having the white border would spoil the overall look.

I will speak with the paper supplier to see if they supply oversized (which can be used at the printers), and if so, go down the route of having the SRA3 trimmed to ensure a good finish without white borders or gaps.

Many thanks for the help!
 
Crop marks are there for that very reason, so that the printers know where to crop the work.

It sounds like something is amiss with your set up, as if you have set an A3 page layout + 5mm bleed, it should effectively be 307 x 430 including your 5mm bleed. The crop marks should be placed at the A3 size (297x420mm), so that the artwork you have extended in the bleed areas are cropped, leaving you with your desired artwork at the very edge of the page.
 
It sounds like something is amiss with your set up, as if you have set an A3 page layout + 5mm bleed, it should effectively be 307 x 430 including your 5mm bleed. The crop marks should be placed at the A3 size (297x420mm), so that the artwork you have extended in the bleed areas are cropped, leaving you with your desired artwork at the very edge of the page.


There's extra space added to account for the crop marks extending past the bleed though. You need to account for that, hence the need for oversized A3.

Screen Shot 2016-05-12 at 13.11.47.png

Is this being printed by a commercial printer, or by Staples/Rymans etc? I'd assume a commercial printer would have oversized A3 to hand.
 
Yes, of course if you wanted something printed to the edge of the page A3 size, then it needs to be printed on larger than A3 paper, but I thought that was obvious...
 
Crop marks are there for that very reason, so that the printers know where to crop the work.

It sounds like something is amiss with your set up, as if you have set an A3 page layout + 5mm bleed, it should effectively be 307 x 430 including your 5mm bleed. The crop marks should be placed at the A3 size (297x420mm), so that the artwork you have extended in the bleed areas are cropped, leaving you with your desired artwork at the very edge of the page.


Hi Carl, this is how the layout is at present and as Paul mentioned the reason why I would need oversized A3 to make it work. I thought I could get away with bleeding over the edge of standard A3, but my logic was a bit misguided!


There's extra space added to account for the crop marks extending past the bleed though. You need to account for that, hence the need for oversized A3.

View attachment 4507

Is this being printed by a commercial printer, or by Staples/Rymans etc? I'd assume a commercial printer would have oversized A3 to hand.

Hi Paul, it is being printed at a commercial printers, so they should be able to use oversized.

Thanks for the help with this!
 
@Alexi I see, yes printers won't print to the edge of the page, so you have no choice but to print on larger than A3 to get your A3 cropped size.

Your original post made it sound as if your set up was reducing the size of your A3 page layout, which shouldn't be the case.
 
The paper company can supply oversized, so am now going down that route!

The only other (and hopefully final!) query I have relating to Indesign and printing is how do you create bleed down the centre of an A3 sheet?
To explain it further - I am also using the oversized A3 sheets to also print my CV (2 A4 CV's per sheet). For this to work I need to create a bleed around each A4 page.

Could this be accomplished using non-facing pages and messing with the master settings to create a spine bleed?

Thanks for the help!
 
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