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Photoshop: Automated Bleeds and Cropmarks


As a print company, we have a lot of artwork hit our desk and often these designs are not print ready. We understand that not all of our customers are professional designers and aren't necessarily able to amend their designs themselves.

In a bid to be as helpful as possible, we've put together the below article. We have some downloadable actions/automations that can be easily installed into your version of Photoshop. When installed, these actions will help you get your artwork up to the industry standard of "print ready".

Below you will find downloadable Photoshop action files. Each file relates to a specific page size and orientation. We will talk you through how these can be installed. Furthermore, we'll give you full instructions on how to create Photoshop actions yourself.

Please note that the files below require a full trial or licensed version of Adobe Photoshop to work.



How do the actions make your artwork print ready?

The Photoshop actions below will automatically make your artwork print ready.

They will make sure that you have a 3mm bleed, crop marks, 300dpi resolution, is flattened and that your design is in CMYK colour mode. It does not matter what size your artwork is in before or what file format you have opened in Photoshop (we recommend saving files as high quality PDFs though).

The only important thing is that the design has the same (or similar) proportions to the size you are trying to print at. This is very important. The final design will look distorted and stretched otherwise. Similarly, your artwork needs to have been designed in a similar size to the final product. For example, if you have designed your artwork at A4 size and you use the A2 action, the final result will be very blurry because the design will have been blown up so much. But again, once the action has finished, have a good look over your design to make sure you're happy with how it looks. If you're happy with how it looks on screen then you will most likely be happy with the final printed product. We recommend that you go to "View" in the top tool bar, followed by "Actual Pixels" to get the best estimation of how the final article will look.

How do they work?

  • 1

    These actions start by making sure your image is flattened (Layer>Flatten Image).

  • 2

    Next, they oversize your image by 1mm. So, for example, if you are running the A5 action, the new size will be 149mm x 211mm.

  • 3

    With the new slightly too large size, the action now increases the canvas size to allow for a 3mm bleed. The canvas size is now 154mm x 216mm.

  • 4

    Remember the extra 1mm from step 2? Half of this boarder is individually selected on all sides and stretched out to the cover the full extent of the canvas. This give us the 3mm bleed. Please note that these Photoshop Actions work particularly well for designs with flat colour background without elements that run over the edge. However, they will work for other designs. Just please be aware that the bleed section will look slightly odd. Keep in mind that printers are unlikely to under trim by much if at all so the vast majority of what you see will not be printed.

  • 5

    Next, the action automatically inserts crop marks onto your design. It also puts a white slug area around that. Again, this will be trimmed off.

  • 6

    Finally, the action converts your design to CMYK and sets resolution to 300dpi giving you a full preview of how your design will look when printed, but before trimming.

All you have to do now is save the design and, if you're happy with it, send it over to your printers…hopefully StuPrint.com.


Here are the Photoshop Actions…

They are sorted by page size and orientation (landscape or portrait). Simply click the one you want to download. Follow the instructions below on how to install and run your Photoshop Action.

  • A3 Landscape
    A3 Portrait
  • A4 Landscape
    A4 Portrait
  • A5 Landscape
    A5 Portrait
  • A6 Landscape
    A6 Portrait
  • A7 Landscape
    A7 Portrait
  • A8 Landscape
    A8 Portrait
  • Business Card Landscape
    Business card Portrait
  • DL Landscape
    DL Portrait

How to install and run these artwork actions:

In Photoshop's menu bar at the top, go to the "Window" dropdown and make sure "Actions" is selected.

 
Photoshop dropdown from the window tab
1

This will make the following mini-window appear in you workstation. Once it has appeared, select the tiny dropdown in the top right hand side.

 
Actions module in photoshop showing how to load an automation
2

From that dropdown, click on "Load Actions…".

 
Photoshop Load action section screenshot
3

You will be prompted to select the action file. This will be a ".atn" file. Simply select and open this.

 
Apple desktop folder opened showing A3 action file
4

All that's left to do now is to run the action. To do this, simply select the action in the window and click the triangular play button at the bottom. The action will now begin getting your artwork print ready. Please note that this will only work on the artwork window that is open.

One its finished, have a good look over. If you're happy with the final product then save it to your hard drive and send it off to your printer.

Cursor hanging over the photoshop play action button
5

Some health warnings:

We strongly recommend that you keep your original artwork somewhere safe and do not overwrite it. Don't forget that these automations flatten all the layers in your design so you will not be able to edit them after.

We unfortunately cannot accept any liability for damage to designs or issues with final print runs.

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