How to Prepare a File for Print: Bleed, Resolution, PDF

Start with the printer's specs

The numbers in this guide are a starting point, not a replacement for your printer's. Before you open a layout program, get the answers to these questions, from the printer's website or by asking.

The figures below come from the US Government Publishing Office (GPO), which publishes its file rules for agencies sending jobs to its contract printers. That makes them a neutral reference for any print job.

Set the document to the trim size

The trim size is the size of the finished piece after cutting: 8.5 × 11 inches for a Letter flyer, 4 × 6 inches for a small photo. Set your document or canvas to exactly that size, in the units the printer uses, before you place anything. Resizing a finished layout to another sheet is an easy way to break the margins; the paper sizes guide shows what happens when an A4 layout meets Letter paper and the other way round, so it is not repeated here.

Cutting is not perfectly exact, and print contracts allow for that. GPO's own quality program for its contract printers, Publication 310.1, measures how far a finished product may differ from the specified trim size before it counts as a major defect:

So even on government work, the knife may land up to 1/16 in away from the line at the strictest level, and up to 1/8 in at Levels III to V, and the job still passes. Two habits follow from that one fact: colour that touches the edge has to run past it (bleed), and anything that must not be cut has to stay well inside it (safe margin).

Add bleed wherever colour touches the edge

Bleed is the strip of background, photo or colour that extends beyond the trim line and is cut away. If the cut lands slightly outside the line, the bleed fills the gap; without it, you see a thin white edge. GPO's Form 952 says bleeds should always be provided in the page layout file and calls 1/16 to 1/8 inch ideal (1.6 to 3.2 mm). Its publishing guidelines, Pub 300.6, say to allow 1/8 inch minimum for any bleed and that the originator, not the printer, should provide it. When the two disagree, the printer's own number wins, so ask.

• Extend the background, not the content. Stretch the photo or colour block past the trim by the bleed; text stays where it is.
• Make the document bigger, or set a bleed. In a layout program, use its bleed setting if it has one, which adds the strip outside the page. In an image editor, set the canvas to the trim size plus twice the bleed.
• Only edges that touch need bleed. A flyer with a white border all round needs none.

A bleed adds pixels, and on small pieces it adds a lot. The table works out the canvas size with 1/8 inch bleed on each side and the pixels needed at 300 pixels per inch, the resolution GPO uses for photographs printed at their scanned size.

On a 3.5 × 2 inch card the bleed adds 21 percent to the area; on a 24 × 36 inch poster, 2 percent. So a photo just big enough for the card's trim size falls short once bleed is added: use a larger original or crop tighter. The image resizer shows an image's pixel dimensions and resizes to an exact width and height, and the PPI vs DPI guide explains why stretching a small image to those numbers does not add detail.

Keep text inside a safe margin

The safe margin, also called the safe area or live area, is the mirror of the bleed: a band inside the trim line where nothing important goes. The same trim tolerance that makes bleed necessary can cut letters off text placed right at the edge. Ask the printer for its safe margin. As an example, a 1/8 inch safe margin on a 3.5 × 2 inch card leaves 3.25 × 1.75 inches for names, phone numbers and logos.

• Inside the safe margin: text, logos, QR codes, page numbers, anything that would look broken if cut.
• Between safe margin and trim: background, photos, decorative shapes.
• Between trim and bleed edge: only the extended background.
• Avoid thin frames close to the edge. A border just inside the trim shows any shift in the cut, because one side ends up wider.

Page numbers count as text too. If you add them with the add page numbers tool, place them inside the safe margin of the finished size.

Give images enough pixels at the final size

The rule is the same for every printed image: pixels needed = inches × pixels per inch. GPO's publishing guidelines scan colour and grayscale photographs at 300 pixels per inch for a print the same size as the original and at 600 for one twice as large, and its design team asks for photos of at least 4 × 6 inches at 300 dpi and warns that images taken from the web will not have enough resolution. Line art such as a scanned logo or signature is scanned far higher, between 800 and 1,200 pixels per inch at 1:1.

The difference between PPI and DPI, how far a phone photo can be enlarged, and why changing the dpi number in a file does nothing are all in the PPI vs DPI guide. Three points matter specifically when you prepare the file:

• Crop, rotate and scale in the image editor, before placing. GPO recommends doing all three in the image program rather than the layout program, and Form 952 adds that resizing after placing makes the file larger and slower to output.
• Count the pixels after cropping. A crop throws pixels away, so read the remaining dimensions from the image resizer and compare them with the table above.
• Keep the original. A copy compressed for email or a website usually has too few pixels for print.

To judge the real size on screen, you need the screen's own pixels per inch, which the PPI calculator works out: a 27 inch 2560 × 1440 monitor has about 109 ppi, so a 3.5 inch card at real size spans about 381 screen pixels. It says nothing about print sharpness, only about size.

RGB and CMYK in plain terms

Screens make colour from red, green and blue light (RGB). Presses make it from cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink (CMYK), which absorb light. GPO's guidelines note that the two cover different ranges of colour, and put the consequence plainly: RGB mode should only be used for images shown on screens, not for commercial printing, files for four-colour process printing should be CMYK only, and converting RGB to CMYK causes a colour shift.

• Who converts. GPO notes that when a printer receives anything other than CMYK, it converts the file itself, and unless a colour standard such as a proof was agreed, any colour shift is the customer's responsibility. Converting yourself lets you see the shift on screen and adjust it before it is printed. Some printers prefer to convert themselves; ask which they want.
• Office programs. GPO notes that word processors, presentation and spreadsheet programs work in RGB and are not designed for CMYK output; expect the colour of a flyer made in one to move.
• Brand colours. A colour that must match exactly can be printed as a spot colour, an ink named in a colour matching system, instead of being built from the four process inks. GPO warns that some spot colours cannot be adequately represented with four-colour ink. If your printer offers spot colours, give it the exact colour name.
• Screens are not proofs. GPO's guidance is that you should never expect the overall colour of a print to match what you saw, because monitors show colours that cannot be printed unless they are calibrated for it.

These rules are about commercial process-colour printing. At home, print from the file you have and judge the colour on a test sheet, not on screen.

Fonts, thin lines and pale tints

A few small things look fine on screen and fail on paper.

• Embed every font. GPO's Form 952 says that when only a PDF is supplied, the fonts must be embedded; otherwise text can reflow or be replaced by another font. The font list in the finished PDF's document properties shows whether each font is embedded.
• Outline text in graphics if needed. GPO names converting the text in a logo or illustration to outlines as one way to avoid font problems, and cautions that outlined text is very hard to edit, so keep a copy with live text.
• No hairlines. GPO's guidelines say never to use rules thinner than 0.5 point; hairlines look acceptable on a desktop printer but virtually disappear at the high resolution of a press.
• No very pale tints. Tint screens under 5 percent also vanish at press resolution, according to the same guidelines. A background at 3 percent grey on screen may print as white.
• Nothing left on the pasteboard. GPO also asks for no stray images outside the page; they confuse output and can make a file fail.

Export the PDF for print

A PDF carries the layout, fonts and images in one file. GPO's guidelines describe a press-ready PDF as one with embedded fonts, graphics, colour data and layout structure, and they caution that PDFs created for the web may not print well because of their resolution and colour. So export a separate print PDF rather than reusing the one you emailed around.

• PDF/X, if the printer asks for it. PDF/X (ISO 15930) is a family of constrained PDFs made for handing files to a printer. The Library of Congress lists its rules for a complete exchange: all fonts and images embedded, the trim and print areas defined explicitly in the file, a bleed area that sits outside the trim, colour defined in a device-independent way with an embedded profile, and no encryption except in PDF/X-1. Pick the version the shop names; if it names none, ask.
• PDF/A is something else. PDF/A (ISO 19005) is the archiving profile: the same idea of a self-contained file for a different job, keeping documents. The PDF vs PDF/A guide covers it.
• Include the bleed. Turn on the bleed in the export settings, so the PDF page is larger than the trim by the bleed on every side, or the trim box marks the finished size. The crop PDF tool explains the five page boxes, trim and bleed box included.
• Do not compress the print file. The compress PDF tool resamples images to 200, 150 or 100 dpi depending on the level; that is right for email and wrong for the copy that goes to press. Make a compressed copy for sharing and send the uncompressed one to print.

If the printer wants one file for a multi-page job, join the pages in order with merge PDF after exporting each part; if it wants separate files, leave them apart. For photos printed at home or proofs on A4 or Letter, JPG to PDF puts each image on a standard page; it does not set an exact trim size with bleed, so for a print shop export the PDF from the program you designed in, or ask whether the shop takes the image file itself.

Check the PDF before you send it

1. Page size. Open the document properties: the page should be the trim size, or the trim size plus twice the bleed.
2. Fonts. The font list should say embedded, or embedded subset, for every font.
3. Edges. Zoom in to each corner. Background should run past the trim; text should sit inside the safe margin.
4. Images. Compare each photo's pixel size with the table above, counted with the bleed. A PDF cannot add pixels the image never had.
5. Proof at 100 percent. Print one page at actual size on your own printer and hold it up. GPO asks for visuals printed at 100 percent, or a note of the percentage when the piece is too large for an office printer. Read every word on paper.
6. Ask for a proof on bigger jobs. GPO recommends proofs for most jobs and for every job in colour. A proof from the shop is a better colour preview than your monitor or your own printer, neither of which GPO considers a reliable guide to the final colour.

Printing at home

• Printers cannot print to the edge. Microsoft blames missing borders on the printer's minimum margin setting and points to the manufacturer for the exact figure. Canon's manual for one of its photo printers says the same thing: the printer leaves a margin around the edges to maintain quality, and the printable area is inside it. Keep everything inside that margin, or the edges will not print.
• Borderless mode crops a little. Where a printer offers borderless printing, Canon's manuals explain that the image is enlarged so it runs off the paper, so slight cropping may occur at the edges, and on some models borderless is not available for certain paper sizes or plain paper. Keep text away from the edges.
• Print at actual size. "Fit to page" scales the page, which changes the size of cards and photos. Use 100 percent or actual size whenever the size matters; the paper sizes guide covers the A4 and Letter cases.
• For edge-to-edge cards, do what a print shop does. Put the card with its bleed on a larger sheet, inside the printer's margin, print, and cut along the trim. A 3.5 × 2 inch card is 3.75 × 2.25 inches with 1/8 inch bleed.

Checklist before you send a file to print

• Specs from the printer: trim size, bleed, safe margin, file format, colour mode, resolution, crop marks.
• Document at the trim size, with bleed where colour touches the edge.
• Text and logos inside the safe margin.
• Images at about 300 ppi at final size, counted after cropping and including the bleed.
• CMYK if the shop asks for it.
• Fonts embedded, no rules under 0.5 point, no tints under 5 percent.
• A print PDF, uncompressed, no password, PDF/X if asked.
• A 100 percent proof on paper, read word by word.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• U.S. Government Publishing Office: Publishing guidelines from GPO, GPO Pub 300.6, 04/2015 (PDFs with embedded fonts, PDFs made for the web may not print well, CMYK only for process colour, RGB for screens, colour shift on conversion, scanning at 300 ppi at 1:1 and 800 to 1,200 ppi for line art, crop and scale before placing, rules of at least 0.5 point, tint screens of at least 5 percent, bleeds of at least 1/8 inch)
• U.S. Government Publishing Office: GPO Form 952, Quality Control for Procured Printing, revised 1/13 (bleeds always in the layout file, 1/16 to 1/8 inch ideal; embed fonts when supplying only a PDF; commercial printers print CMYK or Pantone inks; office programs work in RGB)
• U.S. Government Publishing Office: Quality Assurance Through Attributes Program for Printing and Binding, GPO Publication 310.1, Rev. 09-19 (F-1 Trim Size: deviations greater than 1/16 inch at Level I up to 1/8 inch at Levels III to V are major defects)
• U.S. Government Publishing Office, Creative Services: Get started (photos a minimum of 4 × 6 inches at 300 dpi; images from the web have insufficient resolution)
• Library of Congress, Sustainability of Digital Formats: PDF/X Format Family, ISO 15930 (constrained PDF for prepress exchange; fonts and images embedded, trim and print boxes defined, bleed box outside the trim box, device-independent colour with an output intent, encryption only in PDF/X-1)
• Microsoft Support: Why aren't page borders printing? (the printer's minimum margin setting; check the manufacturer for the value)
• Canon PRO-200 series online manual: Print Area (the printer leaves a margin around the edges; borderless printing not available for some paper sizes and types)
• Canon TS7700 series online manual: Print settings (borderless printing enlarges the image, so slight cropping may occur at the edges; amount of extension)

Written by Tobias. Updated October 21, 2026.