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Bleed lines not showing on document Affinity Designer


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Hi,

This is perhaps a bit of a newbie question, so I apologise in advance but I can't find the answer in the forums.

 

I am creating an A4 document to design a tri-fold lealfet in Affinity Designer. I set the document size as A4 landscape with 25mm bleed lines all round BUT I can't see the bleed lines in my workspace and in fact, according to the ruler the document is exactly A4 size with no bleed lines. When i export as PDF there are no bleed lines either

 

What am I doing wrong ? Is there a tutorial specifically to set out a document from start so it can be properly set up to then be sent to a printer ?

 

Thanks in advance

 

PS: I am not hugely knowledgeable about graphic design / print so any help welcome.

OBH leaflet inside.afdesign

OBH leaflet outside.afdesign

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  • 1 year later...
  • Staff

Hi jaromeB,

No, no news yet, sorry. Meanwhile you can use a rectangle (stroke only, no fill) the same size of the document or artboard plus the bleed area to simulate/preview the bleed on canvas. If you are using a regular document (non-artboard based) you must go to menu View ▸ View Mode and uncheck Clip to Canvas to be able to see the rectangle.

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  • 3 months later...

This is soooo clunky... really looking forward to a real bleed functionality... I've been using MEB's recommendation to make a larger document with bleed size included, then I create a translucent frame to simulate the bleed area. Of course before outputting final files to print, you have to go in and turn off all the bleed layers, which is a pain for multipage documents... Where's APublisher beta?!?!?

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  • 1 month later...

really loved this app. I'm planning to have all affinity suite retail, and quit adobe once and for all when the publisher released, but there has to be bleeds. I'm a book cover designer, right now it's too much waste of time trying to create a workspace which allows me to see my bleeds properly. designer should be able to do stuff like that easier than illustrator or like illustrator. general performance of the app is awsome, but I need this please make bleeds visible :)

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • Staff

Hi Lilouka,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

Bleed previews (on canvas) will come in a future update. Meanwhile you can use a rectangle (with a thin stroke, no fill) with the dimensions of your document + the bleed area and place it over the document to help you visualise the boundaries of the bleed area. You may need to go to menu View ▸ View Mode and uncheck/untick Clip to Canvas (on non-artboard based documents) to be able to view the rectangle stroke outside the canvas. For artboard based documents (Affinity Designer only) just make sure the rectangle layer is outside the respective artboard layer in the Layers panel.

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I didn't like discovering that there's no way to link text boxes in AD as this makes it pretty useless to my work (you can't even get a brochure off the ground) but no way to see the bleeding? Well this is quite disappointing as (in my humble opinion) they should have been available since the first version, don't you think?. I understand that the software is very affordable but please don't make it cheap. Best regards :) 

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  • Staff

Hi juanma_dv,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

Bleed preview (on canvas) will come in a future update. Regarding linking text boxes - this is a feature for our upcoming desktop publishing software - Affinity Publisher (sneak preview here - available as a public Beta next summer). Affinity Designer is an hibrid vector/raster design/illustration software more comparable to Adobe Illustrator, so its abilities to work with text blocks are more limited.

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Adoro Portugal y a los portugueses, las personas más amables del mundo :)
I know that AD is similar to Illustrator, that's why I'm asking for the text linking, which has been present in Illustrator for a loooong time. I bought AD thinking that it would be my go-to software, but I'm afraid that I will have to wait some more time.
Thanks anyway for the answer. :)
Best regards.
Juanma

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  • 1 month later...

+1

 

I need better bleed capabilities as mentioned above all the time. E'ry day.

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I too find the invisible bleed area very difficult. @Fixx it's not good enough simply to know it's there and that it works. If we have an image on the edge of the document, most printers require that it extends all the way to the bleed line (that's what bleed is for). So what are we to do, just drag and guess, or manually move the position by 2mm (might require resizing too if we are touching 3 edges with the one image? This is a deal breaker. Drawing a rectangle around the artboard with no fill does not work even with clip to canvass turned off. Visibility is absolutely limited to the artboard edge in artboard mode. The rectangle is invisible unless it is entirely contained inside the artboard, as with all other elements. So we can make our artboards larger by the bleed amount and draw a trim line, but then the export miss-reports the document finish size and as @looksliketired has pointed out, with multipage documents, turning off these manual guide layers for each export is too time consuming.

 

I'm really trying to love AD. So many good ideas and implementations and I'm so angry with Adobe. But I'll have to reluctantly crawl back to Illustrator. @MEB  you keep saying "in a future release" but can we please have this issue prioritised? I've just downloaded 1.6.4 in hope - but alas.  I think it's time that the designers see this as a design mistake - not a future feature request. You're driving us back to your competitor and, for me at least, wasting my money on my AD purchase.

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The rectangle for bleed on an artboard-based document has to be outside of the artboard. Just drag it to the top outside the artboard.

 

And yes, it's hokey and not at all intuitive. And one should shut off the visibility before going to PDF to be safe. One of these days we'll actually get bleed indication.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I read many comments and came to the conclusion that AD was only intended to create digital environments. In general, the program and the interface are very clumsy at the time of preparing documents for printing. Being able to see the bleeding line is basic and it should not be necessary to invent systems such as putting a square with transparency and line and then removing it.

It is not the way. This function is standard in all programs of this type.

No need to invent anything new. Too much time waiting for a vital improvement.

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  • 1 month later...
On 09/01/2018 at 3:18 PM, MEB said:

Hi juanma_dv,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

Bleed preview (on canvas) will come in a future update. Regarding linking text boxes - this is a feature for our upcoming desktop publishing software - Affinity Publisher (sneak preview here - available as a public Beta next summer). Affinity Designer is an hibrid vector/raster design/illustration software more comparable to Adobe Illustrator, so its abilities to work with text blocks are more limited.

Hi MEB.

Any news on when this might happen. And importantly, will it be baked on release 1 of Affinity Publisher?

 

Thanks

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In Document setup just set your margins to be the same as your bleed, then you'll see the margin lines where the bleed should be :)  Works if you don't want margins at a different size, if you do then you could just set guides at that position.

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