Page Layout ⇒ Crop Lines and Bleed

[insipidtoast]

Hello,

My printer says I need to include "Crop Lines and Bleed at 1/8inch" in my pdf. I'm not exactly sure what these are, but my printer says they are so that they know how to trim each book exactly the same.

How do I create these using lyx?

Thanks

[localghost]

[…] My printer says I need to include "Crop Lines and Bleed at 1/8inch" in my PDF. I'm not exactly sure what these are, but my printer says they are so that they know how to trim each book exactly the same. […]

These are special terms from printing. Bleed means an additional extent that goes beyond the actual paper dimensions. It is used for adjustments in the printing process. Crop marks (or crop lines) show the actual paper dimensions on the galley.

[…] How do I create these using lyx? […]

Which is your paper size?


Thorsten

[insipidtoast]

My paper size is 6x9 inches. But I accidently entered in my preamble:

Code: Select all

\usepackage[cam,width=6in,height=13in]{crop}

And was able to see the marks on both sides toward the bottom of the page. I guess that's what the printer is looking for
However, 13in was a mistake on my part, so I entered:

Code: Select all

\usepackage[cam,width=6in,height=9in]{crop}

And the result did not have any visible crop marks in the PDF.

I don't know what they mean by "at 1/8in" and I also haven't found anything on the internet about relating to bleeds in this context.

First of all, I don't really understand what my printer even means by any of this, so I was hoping someone here who is more experienced with printing would understand.

It's the weekend, so I can't clarify with the printer until Monday.

But basically what they told me was to make some lines visible in the PDF, because I specified that I want them to trim all the books to exactly 6"x9". I'm a bit surprised that their machines can't do that without me having to put some visible lines on the pages.

I'm not sure if I should use the showframe package:
http://texblog.org/2011/04/04/make-page ... s-visible/
Or if I should use the crop package.

[localghost]

My paper size is 6x9 inches. […]

So this is what you have to give as paper size to the document class (see below).

[…] I don't know what they mean by "at 1/8in" and I also haven't found anything on the internet about relating to bleeds in this context. […]

A bleed of (or at) one eighth of an inch (=0.125in) on each edge of the paper means that you have to add a total of a quarter of an inch (=0.25in=2×0.125in) to the width and the height of your paper dimensions and give this parameters to the crop package. In LaTeX I would do it like this*.

Code: Select all

\documentclass[
  paper=6in:9in,
  pagesize,
]{scrbook}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[
  noinfo,
  cam,
  cross,                % crosses as marks
  width=6.25in,         % the width of the galley
  height=9.25in,        % the height of the galley
  center                % actual page is centered on the galley
]{crop}
\usepackage{blindtext}  % only to create dummy text

\begin{document}
  \blinddocument
\end{document}

I have chosen crosses as crop marks because the default marks would be visible only in a small part. That's something you should clarify with your printer. For details in this regard please refer to the package manual.

I don't know if you did things similar for the actual paper dimensions in your document. So I attached the output to give you an idea of how it should finally look.


____________
*I don't use LyX so I can't tell exactly how to do it there.

[insipidtoast]

Thanks localghost! I'm pretty sure that's what the printer is looking for.

It doesn't make very much sense to me though...If they are trimming the book to 6x9, then why place the trim lines at 6.25x9.25? Or anything other than at 6x9?

Wouldn't that result in a 6.25x9.25 book?

FYI in lyx you just enter:

Code: Select all

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
 \usepackage[
   noinfo,
   cam,
   cross,                % crosses as marks
   width=6.25in,         % the width of the galley
   height=9.25in,        % the height of the galley
   center                % actual page is centered on the galley
 ]{crop}

in the preamble of the document.

One other thing, in the example you attached it doesn't look like you specified "center". Is that correct? It seems like you have the odd-numbered pages flush to the left side of the page, and the even-numbered pages flush to the right side of the page. If this was a printed book, then wouldn't the text be crowded towards the spine on every page? I think you'd want the opposite: odd-numbered pages either centered or flush to the right side of the page....

[meho_r]

Thanks localghost! I'm pretty sure that's what the printer is looking for.

It doesn't make very much sense to me though...If they are trimming the book to 6x9, then why place the trim lines at 6.25x9.25? Or anything other than at 6x9?

Wouldn't that result in a 6.25x9.25 book?

Let's try a little experiment.

1. Print couple of pages of your document without crop marks. Now take the scissors and cut the pages down to 6x9 in. You'll have to use a ruler to measure where to cut and how big the margins are on every page. You'll definitely make some mistakes, because printers aren't that accurate and position of pages printed on the paper will vary.
2. Now print the file localghost attached. No matter how big is the paper on which your document is printed, you'll know exactly where to cut (note that printers usually place 8 or 16 or even more pages of a document on one big sheet of paper which should be then cut down to form a finished book). Cut the pages down using crop marks. Use the ruler to discover that the page you get after cutting it at crop marks are exactly 6x9 in, and you don't have to use ruler on every page to determine how big the margins should be etc.
3. Change dimensions for crop package from 6.25x9.25 in to 7.25x10.25 in. Print couple of pages and cut them down using crop marks. How big the resulting cropped pages are?
   

   FYI in lyx you just enter:

   Code: Select all

   \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
    \usepackage[
      noinfo,
      cam,
      cross,                % crosses as marks
      width=6.25in,         % the width of the galley
      height=9.25in,        % the height of the galley
      center                % actual page is centered on the galley
    ]{crop}

   in the preamble of the document.

   If you're using another document class, not scrbook (KOMA-Script), apart from adding crop-related code to the preamble, in LyX you can set custom page dimensions (in this case 6x9 in) in Document > Settings > Page Layout. That should be enough to get the same result as in localghost's example.

A simplified rule of thumb (not trying to be absolutely accurate): dimensions set by crop package should always be larger or the same as dimensions specified by geometry or other packages (or, simply, dimensions specified in Page Layout in LyX); dimensions set by crop package will always "enlarge" the page for the amount for which dimensions in crop-related code are larger than those in page-related code (geometry etc.). But, crop marks placed by crop package will always be positioned at the corners of the page specified by geometry package (or Page Layout in LyX). This is illustrated in the point 3 above.

One other thing, in the example you attached it doesn't look like you specified "center". Is that correct? It seems like you have the odd-numbered pages flush to the left side of the page, and the even-numbered pages flush to the right side of the page. If this was a printed book, then wouldn't the text be crowded towards the spine on every page? I think you'd want the opposite: odd-numbered pages either centered or flush to the right side of the page....

Never. A good page design in a book means that the inner margins should be around half size the outer margins. Same goes for top and bottom margins. So, if your outer margin is, e.g., 2 in, then the inner margin should be 1 in. Also, if the bottom margin is 2 in, then the top margin should be 1 in. These are considered by many as optimal ratios (when you open the book, you see three margins of the same width: the left, the "middle" – two inner margins together – and the right), though some typographers allow other ratios too, e.g. inner:outer=1:1.5. You should (almost) never have larger outer margins than the inner ones in a two-sided book. Ratio of 1:1 is quite bad too.

[insipidtoast]

I don't really get everything you specified in the first part of your post. I guess latex expands the page size by .25inches, and then still puts the cross mark at 6x9inches?

In response to the last paragraph of your post, every book I've seen has equal margins on the right and left of the page.

If they reduced the spine margins by half, then the printer must've done something to push them out away from the spine, because measuring the finished product you get equal margin width on either side of the text, so the outside margins are half the width of both inside (spine) margins combined. This makes perfect sense, because if you made the inside margins half the width as the outside margins, then you'd have to practically bend the book backwards in order to read the text that's bunched in towards the spine.

[meho_r]

I don't really get everything you specified in the first part of your post. I guess latex expands the page size by .25inches, and then still puts the cross mark at 6x9inches?

Something like that, yes.

In response to the last paragraph of your post, every book I've seen has equal margins on the right and left of the page.

If they reduced the spine margins by half, then the printer must've done something to push them out away from the spine, because measuring the finished product you get equal margin width on either side of the text, so the outside margins are half the width of both inside (spine) margins combined.

Which often makes the difference between good and bad printers (or good and bad book designers in the first place). Good printers respect crop marks you provided, while bad printers usually center everything, no matter which ratio is used for margins.

This makes perfect sense, because if you made the inside margins half the width as the outside margins, then you'd have to practically bend the book backwards in order to read the text that's bunched in towards the spine.

Not unless inner margins are too small (and you should always take binding into account). To get my point, it is best that you take a look at A Few Notes on Book Design book, especially chapter 3 (p. 27ff), and visual presentations of various book designs (p. 34ff). One thing you'll notice in all of the examples is that inner margins never match outer margins regarding their width, but are always smaller. However, if inner and outer margins are of the same width, then at least upper margin should be smaller. Having all four margins proportional is really a bad design (printers don't really care about this, but you might want to).