Bleed area issue when downscaling from A3 to A5

[William Overington]

In another thread I produced some artwork with some text in an A3 document.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/163212-art-and-a-poem-using-language-independent-glyphs/&do=findComment&comment=933597

Later, I produced a slightly different version with CMYK colour and 3 mm bleed areas all around. I uploaded it to an online virtual print house and I have received some prints on 350 gsm paper, the colours going right to the edges.

I am now trying to produce an A5 version.

To do this I made a copy of the .afdesign file and, still at A3 size, in the copy I gradually increased the text size from 11 point to 24 point, by a combination of increasing the point size of the text, decreasing the inter-line spacing and moving the text box a bit up and a bit left.

This done so that with an A5 version that the text will be large ebough to read.

I then saved that A3 large lettering file.

I then made a copy of that .afdesign file and then, using File Document Setup... scaled the copy to A5.

Yes, the text and the language-independent symbols go to 12 point.

However, it seems that the scaling is about the point (0, 0) so the black now only goes to -1.5 mm rather than -3 mm.

That seems perfectly logical, but it does mean that the A5 PDF document only has black across half of the bleed area.

Ah, I am wondering if I can add black rectangles into the bleed area.

That might be straightforward down the left side, but along the upper edge and lower edge there are angles and at the lower edge several colours.

So, I might be able to fix it that way.

But is there a simpler method please?

William

 

  

[Hangman]

Since the original coloured shapes were drawn using the pen tool in Designer, once you've scaled your artwork down to A5 simply use the Node tool to extend the coloured shape coverage to your 3mm bleed or beyond...

[William Overington]

Thank you.

So something like add two new nodes to the flat horizontal part, move one down vertically several millimetres, and the one that is nearer the angled end of the original down and sideways and use the node tool to find the coordinates of the original line and work out the gradient so as to place the new node such that the angle of the added new piece is as close as possible to the angle of the original edge of the block of colour. Repeat for each colour.

It may take a while but if it gets a good print that will be worth it.

William

 

[Hangman]

4 hours ago, William Overington said:

So something like add two new nodes to the flat horizontal part, move one down vertically several millimetres, and the one that is nearer the angled end of the original down and sideways and use the node tool to find the coordinates of the original line and work out the gradient so as to place the new node such that the angle of the added new piece is as close as possible to the angle of the original edge of the block of colour. Repeat for each colour.

Not even that, you can simply move the existing nodes up, down and left so that your bleed area is covered. Once you've scaled your artwork to A5 and have positioned it correctly, if you add guides to indicate where the respective shape/s overlap the page edge you can use that as a guide to ensure your extended shape/s overlap at the same location.

If you also use the Artistic Text Tool (rather than the Frame Text tool) for your text prior to scaling from A3 to A5, you can simply scale everything mathematically by 50% and align accordingly on the page which overcomes the issue of the Frame text not scaling in line with your artwork unless you manually use the outer scale handle to scale the artwork.

Your artwork actually already has plenty of bleed overlap which once scaled to A5 exceeds the 3mm bleed anyway so you shouldn't actually need to make any changes...