Images getting slightly cropped when printing in shop

basill

I have been messing around making some magazine covers for friends and family using Photoshop CS6. All in all they have come out pretty good when printed onto 8 by 12. One thing I noticed though is that if I have text close to the edge I run the risk of it getting cropped when printing. Having read a bit on the internet it seems to be a function of the photo printers that they will crop a few mm around the edges of your work. The chap in the photo printing place said I should allow a few mm for "bleed" but he wasn't sure how much exactly.

So the question is how do you pros get around this? Do you allow a fixed number of mm around the edges for cropping by the printer? If so how much and is it fixed or does it change depending on the size of print?

Is there anything you specifically do in PS to allow for this eg: make a template or increase the canvas size?

Cheers

ScumLord

Typical bleed is 5mm all round, sometimes it's 3mm but I'd say you're safer with 5mm.

Turn on rulers in photoshop and use the arrow tool to pull out some guidelines to 5mm into your document. Just click and hold on the ruler on either the top or left side then then drag out your guide line.

EDIT: Just on a side note, if it's for an actual magazine they sometimes have text areas too which might be 15mm inside the edge of the document. You're not expected to have text outside of this area.

basill

EDIT: Just on a side note, if it's for an actual magazine they sometimes have text areas too which might be 15mm inside the edge of the document. You're not expected to have text outside of this area.

No just for fun. Been taking magazine cover/headers off google images and suchlike and making up covers for family with our own photos and captions and trying to match the fonts as best as I can.

Thanks for the advice - much appreciated, just gave it a go in PS and its pretty straight forward. I actually used one of the images that printed out at the shop slightly cropped and sure enough when I put in 5mm guidelines it shows up what was going on. Nothing that a bit of dragging and dropping won't fix.

stcstc

depends where you get them printed

most photo lab type shops, are going to print borderless, the cropping is to make the borderless work

if its critical what you could do is print it on a larger size and trim back the excess