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How do bleeds work with artboards?


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Can someone please explain how I can use artboards and bleeds together? I'm not seeing the bleed after exporting as PDF. I setup a 1" in bleed in the document setup to test it but I'm not seeing anything upon export outside of the artboard.

 

Any help is appreciated!

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I went through the tutorial you mentioned, and if it is the correct one it is the organizations of your trifold into a group.  Please, check, but for me, when I group them.  So the group acts like a new document that includes its child artboards.  Please try to select the group and go to document setup.  You will have a document with the new dimensions, and you will notice that your margins and bleeds have been reset.  Because it is in effect a new document, you have to put in the new bleed and margin parameters for the new merged document. 

If my interpretation is correct, you should just have to make sure your new trifold document settings has bleed parameters defined and it should work fine.

Assuming I have understood your problem in the first place of course.

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Thanks crabtrem, but what you're describing doesn't work for me. I've recreated the trifold doc using basic shapes and grouped the 3 artboards together. I've checked the bleed after grouping them and don't see the bleed setting changing based on the group. I have them set to 1" on each side and it doesn't seem to get reset no matter what.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kbsgoiocm8rxdiw/Screenshot%202016-04-09%2012.02.16.png?dl=0

 

To export them as a group, the tutorial tells you to:

  • group the artboards together
  • then go to the export persona > layers panel and create a slice
  • then flip to the export persona > slices panel and modify the export settings (in my case to include the bleed)
  • I set the export options to PDF/X-4 preset and then add the bleed option and crop marks option
  • then export the slice (remembering my doc setup, even with the group selected, says the bleed is 1" on each side)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b3cx8cqjxgsdeuy/Screenshot%202016-04-09%2012.14.18.png?dl=0

 

I've attached the exported PDF.

tri-fold-bleed-test.pdf

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Hi, HYR  :) 

I examined your PDF and it looks like a Designer bug.

 

The document actually contains your bleeds, but the groups (from artboards) are set to clipping masks. Look at the picture below, I did a screenshot of your opened PDF with the masks (crops) disabled. You can also simply import your PDF back to Designer to see this.

 

1_masks_disabled.png

 

I also tried recreating your design on my own and exporting and got the same results. When exported as individual artboards, no problems, grouped, same trouble.
_______

However, I don't see any point in doing any print design composed from multiple artboards. If it fits your workflow, you probably have only one solution.

 

What I do on every print job is pre-press preparation.

I create a new document with the same dimensions (in your case the dimesion of all 3 artbrds combined) and paste my design in it, including everything.

Then I convert texts to curves, clean the shapes and layers, check the color formats, etc (not neccessary with your test design). Then, of course, the export is not problematic in any way.

See this image, you can see I imported the design with bleeds. 

 

2_single_artboard.png

 

It seems like a lot of additional work, but I found out the pre-press prep in the new clean document is important to me, since I can do all the simplification before print without messing with my original file. Plus you basically need to do this only once before sending to printshop, so it's not that bad... :) 

 

Here is the result PDF
and
here the source file

 

Hope it helped :)

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Thanks MEB, crabtrem, Oval, and rdksl for your help.

 

@rdksl something similar to your pre-press preparation is basically what I ended up doing on Friday to get it to work and you're probably right that it's a good practice to do normally. I think you're also right though that this is a bug with the artboards being clipped on export. Thanks for your advice and testing it out for me.

 

I'll report this in the bugs area and hope for a fix. :)

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I just wanted to finalize my interpretation of what might be happening.  What I believe is going on, is that when you group the separate dartboards into a new document, and set the bleed.  The bleed area of the new document takes precedence.  There is a bleed area for the new document, but it is blank, or white.  The previous bleeds of the individual artboards reside somewhere below the group, masked out. 

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@crabtrem, I'm still now following where you find the bleed changes based on groups. Isn't it a document setting and therefore applies to the whole document? Maybe include an example screenshot or video? Thanks!

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I am no expert. But this is what I did to check various outputs. 

First I created my artboard example by using rectangles to highlight document areas, margin areas, and bleed areas.  You can see them on the layers panel, even though the bleed is not visible on the main view.

post-12258-0-76644600-1460497844_thumb.png

 

I then duplicated the artboards, and placed them under a single group.

 

post-12258-0-90969300-1460498068_thumb.png

 

Then selecting the group, I went into File-Document Setup to check the new composite dimensions, and make sure the margins and bleeds were set.

I then create that new slice from the group.

post-12258-0-07868900-1460500099_thumb.png

 

So the normal 3 separate artboards with a bleed will look like this.

trifold.pdf

The grouped slice will produce this output.

trifold_slice1_ver2.pdf

But to be clear, I take the printer marks off.

trifold_slice1_ver3.pdf

So what you get is the 3 artboards as a single page pdf, but there is an apparent white area bordering that equates to a bleed.  But it is white, and does not reflect the bleed areas produced by the blue rectangle under each artboard.

At least that is my interpretation of what I believe is most likely going on.  I could be wrong.

 

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@crabtrem

 

Looks like your results were the same as mine. The blue color didn't show in the bleed area for the group, where in the individual artboard it did. That was my experience as well.

 

See MEB's response in my bug post... https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/19663-grouped-artboards-bleed-issue/

 

He has an interesting way to address the issue.

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