Paper Format for Print - Size discrepancy?

[Rojarosguitar]

Another maybe stupid question of a newbe: I have layouted a book for print in the (European) format A5 for the page (148 mm x 210 mm) which makes a paper format of A4 (210 mm x 296 mm). That is also what the rulers show me in Publisher.

But when I print it out on my consumer laser printer (Brother) in 100%,  obtain 20 mm from the text to the edge of the paper, although the margin is set to 18 mm and 3 mm should be left for cutting, so I should have 21mm from the the text to the edge of the paper.

Is there something wrong with my logic, or is the printer driver for my laser printer not precise enough?

Edited July 11, 2023 by Rojarosguitar
typo

[Alfred]

Firstly, A4 is 210 mm × 297 mm, not 210 mm × 296 mm: the short side of A5 is 148 mm instead of 148.5 mm because half millimetres in the A series are discarded when you progress from one size to the next size down. Secondly, the 3 mm bleed is there precisely(!) because trimming is never going to be accurate to the nearest millimetre; likewise, a consumer-grade printer’s paper feed isn’t guaranteed to give you exactly the same margins from one sheet of paper to the next, even if you ignore the effects of temperature and humidity on the dimensions and smoothness of each sheet.

[thomaso]

4 hours ago, Rojarosguitar said:

the margin is set to 18 mm and 3 mm should be left for cutting, so I should have 21mm from the the text to the edge of the paper.

I can't fully follow yet: Do you print an A4 spread on an A4 sheet? If yes, bleed doesn't matter because it is outside the paper. And the resulting position of the print on the paper may vary within some tolerance as mentioned above by @Alfred. – A deviation of 1 mm appears to me rather low for an office printer.

Whereas if you print an A5 page on an A4 sheet the distance to the paper edge should be more than 18, 20 or 21 mm: paper width minus page width / 2 = 210 – 148 = 62 mm. ->  / 2 = 31 mm (left and right of the printed layout page), while again the bleed wouldn't matter (unless it shows colour, too).

[Rojarosguitar]

Thanks. I have uploaded a page from the pdf export with cutting marks. This is suppposed to be two A5 book pages. When I print it out on my Brother office laser printer, I don't even see the cutting marks. I just get the 18mm margin left and right which is exactly what should be left after the cutting...

Maybe they use bigger paper sizes in print? Sorry, this is my first book layout project ever... also because I'm not a native speaker, I may use wrong terms.

ObDerUrknallLautWar_Satz_Test_01 (verschoben).pdf

Edited July 12, 2023 by Rojarosguitar

[Dan C]

Thanks for uploading your PDF @Rojarosguitar.

Your documents 'Trim Box' (the area inside of the bleed) is A4 in size, less 1mm in width.

Your documents 'Bleed Box' (the area including the bleed) is 3mm larger than this, on every side.

Your documents 'Media Box' (the area including the bleed and the printing cutting marks) is considerably larger - 12mm larger on each side and 18.6mm larger on the top and bottom compared to the Trim Box.

Therefore when printing on A4 paper, you are only seeing the 'Trim Box' area, which explains the margins on the printed page.

If you want to include the printer cutting marks, you will either need to print on larger paper, or scale down the document to fit.

I hope this clears things up!

[thomaso]

5 hours ago, Rojarosguitar said:

Maybe they use bigger paper sizes in print?

A facing page document gets usually printed as single pages (not 2-page spreads) and on a sheet that is larger then the final print medium (after cutting). Depending on the printing process and machine the printing sheet can vary in its size and even print a bunch of single pages on 1 large sheet, while each single layout page may get printed with cropping marks. Some printers prefer to get a PDF that includes cropping marks, others prefer to add them in their prepress process.

[Rojarosguitar]

So, will the printer workshop take care of this format stuff, and can they rescale if needed? Thanks anyway!

[Dan C]

That would be a question that only your printers would be able to answer - as they should confirm the exact sizing and colour settings for the document, required for their printing processes

[thomaso]

13 hours ago, Rojarosguitar said:

will the printer workshop take care of this format stuff

In addition to Dan's recommendation: It depends what data you deliver versus what result you want.

For instance, if you send a PDF with 2-page spreads (as in your PDF above) but expect a result as double-sided printed brochure (for staple or thread binding) they hardly can't just "take care" to achieve this but would need possibly time consuming manipulation to your data. They would have to impose the spreads of your PDF as single pages (half spreads) and possibly crop the inner bleed and cropmarks for double-sided printing in one go. While if you want as result for instance a book made of single pages and glue or spiral bound in the spine then the required prepress process will vary.

Whereas if you expect 2-page tableaus as in your PDF above then this export style can work but needs the information about the wanted scaling value (x %), for instance to achieve a result on A4 landscape but without cropmarks (= reduced to the trimbox). In this case it maybe easier to deliver a PDF without bleed, cropmarks etc. and print the A4 spreads in 100%.

[Rojarosguitar]

oh my... I see I'll need to talk with the printers. In case that I need to change the export, is there a way to do it in Pubisher 2, without destroying the current layout?

[PaulEC]

As someone who, over many years, has both sent work to printers and also received work from others to be printed, I have come up with one golden rule: Ask the printer how they want the work to be formatted and sent to them! 😉

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Rojarosguitar said:

In case that I need to change the export, is there a way to do it in Pubisher 2, without destroying the current layout?

If you mean to export single pages versus 2-pages spreads: Yes, it is just a simple export setting and does not require any change to your layout document!

To export as single pages choose in the export options for "Area" the option "All Pages", like this in V1:

This setting is independent of your export choices for bleed, cropmarks etc.

So, in case you get requested to export single pages with bleed at 3 edges but no bleed at the inner edge (at the spine) then you will need to adjust your bleed settings in the Document Setup and set the inner bleed = 0 (but again, without changing your layout).

[Rojarosguitar]

Many thanks... you all are so helpful! My gratitude to you...

[DavidDoesAffinity]

On 7/12/2023 at 7:41 AM, Rojarosguitar said:

When I print it out on my Brother office laser printer, I don't even see the cutting marks.

This maybe an uninformed 10p's worth from Essex but here goes anyway.

What driver are you using on your Brother printer? A few weeks ago, I had a problem with my Brother Office Laser on my work/home network and made it worse before it got better. I removed and reinstalled the printer but unbeknown to me it had used the Microsoft driver. All seemed to be great until a few days later, when I printed a custom DVD Case sleeve, from a template I have used 100s of times from Publisher, only to discover after trimming to the cut lines that it was was shrunk by 4%. Having established the doc printed fine on the Canon IJ, I replaced the MS driver with the Brother driver and normal service and size was restored.