HOWTO: Get printer's marks and correct bleed sizes in PDFs output from Illustrator CS3
Jan 10 ’08
GRRRRR!
Sometimes stupid software bugs just burn my bu**.
For one of my clients, I designed a 8.5x11" flyer that's going to a real printer. It's a full-bleed piece, so the printer requested that I give them an eighth-inch bleed, with trim marks. I thought, "Oh. No worries. I'm using my brand-spanking-new-hot-off-the-presses copy of CS3, which will surely be able to handle this sort of thing. Well, you can see where this is going — it doesn't. If you make an 8.5x11" documentin Illustrator CS3, and then save it as a PDF with the appropriate bleed size and trim marks, you don't get what you wanted. Illustrator crops the document at the artboard limits, which are 8.5x11".
Some quick googling turned up a discussion of the problem, but not the solution I wanted.
But there is a work-around. I'll give you a hint: it doesn't involve CS3's new crop area tool.
If you use the crop area tool, you get the same bug, so it's no help.
The solution:
-
Add ¼" of width all the way around the artboard, making your document 9x11.5"
Save the document as a PDF
Open the new PDF in Acrobat 8
Go to Document > Crop Pages...
Set the TrimBox (shown below) to ¼" all the way around — to compensate for the ¼" we added before. You'll see the bright green line in the preview window that now delineates the original 8.5x11" document size.
Go to Advanced > Print Production > Add Printers Marks
Check "Trim Marks"
You should now see the trim marks! Don't forget to save…
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On January 28th Jackie said:
Hey Brent,
I'm desperate... is there a way to do this with Acrobat 5?
Don't ask why I'm working in Acrobat 5... long, sad story...
Thanks!
Jackie
On January 28th Brent Miller said:
Oh, I'm so sorry! I wish I knew, but I haven't used Acrobat 5 in ... years. Have you tried looking at the Adobe forums?
Good luck!
On February 15th Jonk said:
Howdy. I saved in the target size (A3) in Illustrator, then in Acrobat enlarged the page in Advanced -> Print Production -> Crop Pages, then put the marks in Advanced -> Print Production -> Add Printer Marks. I think this way you'll accomplish the same thing(?).
On February 28th Kevin said:
Yes, Illustrator CS3 will save a PDF with proper bleeds. You just have to tell it to do so when saving the PDF. It's in the marks & bleeds options when doing Save-As.
On August 7th kfrost said:
Thank you for posting this!!! It saved me!
On October 30th brian said:
so, yeah, this was a great help. amazing. cs3 really sucked. this problem has finally been rectified in cs4. but here at my shitty work computer with cs3, i had to deal with this issue again. adobe. seriously. get. a. clue.
On December 8th Robin said:
This didn't work for me. I was dumbfounded, nobody seemed to have the answer and it made me crazy and stole days of my life, but I figured out a way. Maybe this helps someone. So here goes:
Your bleeds area needs to be defined before you SAVE AS PDF. Meaning you define a border, in my case 3mm wide, that is outside you defined artboard format. For some reason neither Illustrator CS2 nor CS3 give you this option when defining a new document- for me using a PC that is, my friend with a mac had that option. In InDesign it's easy to find the setting later, but I couldn't for the life of me find it in Illustrator.
I could see the trim marks in Illustrator, and they were in the right place. When you Save As PDF, select your print marks and set the bleeds to 3mm (or whichever you previously set, if you were able to). The output didn't show any trim marks, the pdf just ended at the edge of the art work. Go to Document>Crop pages... and you will see that Acrobat Cropped n trimmed all over the place.
I had followed this posts advice and enlarged my artboard to be able to see the trim marks in illustrator. Playing with the "Crop Pages..." setting and the Advanced>Print Production>Add Printer Marks setting in Acrobat finally showed trim marks- but they were at the edge of the artboard format I had enlarged earlier, in contrast to the trim marks in Illustrator that were in the right place.
So here's the answer that worked for me and will hopefully help you. In Illustrator, make sure the document format neatly hugs your image. i.e. a square of 10x10 should have an artboard of 10x10. Then, make your own border in the size of your bleed- in my case rectangles 3mm wide going round the image, like a picture frame. Use smart Smart Guides to make sure the frame clips neatly to your image (Tip: Try selecting and while holding down the mouse button press shift, then drag- your object will now move only in 90, 45, or 0 degree angles. Also helpful to know is dragging a PATH will make an INTERSECTION more likely- try it, you'll see what I mean.)
Save As PDF with all the above settings, and again you will see no trim marks. In Acrobat, go to Document>Crop pages... and reduce the crop box to your bleed size. If necessary, go to Advanced>Print Production>Add Printer Marks. You should now have trim marks visible in just the right places. Don't forget to save... hope this helps,
Best R
On January 19th Sheila said:
I had a problem with the PDF not exporting the bleed but instead was cropping to my art board. The solution I found was in illustrator CS3 you need to set your preference to INCHES instead of the default MILLIMETER. This should correct the issue you are having when you export the PDF.
On March 23rd Alec said:
Im having a problem with another bug in Acrobat CS3 and CS4. I want to crop the trim marks off to avoid re exporting without trims. The manual crop i.e. draw a crop box works ok but if you try and crop using the advanced crop pages tool numerically to the trim box it doesn’t work. I wish Adobe would fix these bugs.
On September 24th ohbrooke said:
THANK YOU! You saved me.
On February 16th John said:
I just ran across this and (finally) discovered a solution that doesn't involve mucking with your ai file: In the Save As pdf dialogue box, you must select a "Standard" (e.g. "PDF/X-4:2007").
If the Standard is "None" (unhelpfully, the default for most presets), the printer's marks don't show. Period. Who knows why (just another lovable Illustrator quirk).
(Also double check that Marks and Bleeds are still present - they like to reset themselves.)
On June 21st Andy said:
John on February 16th - you are the man!
Worked brilliantly and no messing round with crops, borders, inches or Acrobat as per the other posts.
Thanks
On August 13th Jen said:
Yes, you are bloody brilliant John! I went through each post and finally got to yours. Worked like a dream! So simple and no mucking around.
On October 13th iMac said:
Just found this little tool on the MacAppStore: PdfBoxEditor. Nice standalone programm to fix all my PDF boxes...