How to make a print‑ready PDF: bleed, crop marks and a safe margin
A print shop doesn't cut your cards one by one. It prints them on big sheets, stacks the sheets and cuts the whole stack at once, and the blade can land a hair to one side. If your colour stops exactly at the edge of the design, that hair is enough to leave a thin white line along one side. Three things prevent it: bleed, crop marks and a safe margin.
Bleed: colour past the edge
Bleed is colour that runs on past the edge of the design, so there's nothing white to show if the cut lands slightly off. The extra strip is cut away. Shops in Europe usually ask for 3 mm on every side, shops in the US for ⅛ inch (3.175 mm). If you send ⅛ inch, both are happy.
Bleed only matters for things that touch the edge: a coloured background, a band across the top, a photo running edge to edge. A design with a white border all round doesn't need it, though it does no harm.
Crop marks: where to cut
Crop marks are thin lines in the corners, outside the design, that show where the edges are. Some shops want them; many online printers say "no crop marks", because they place your file on their own sheet. Read the shop's file guide and do what it says.
A safe margin: keep words inside
Just as the cut can land outside the edge, it can land inside it. Keep names, phone numbers and prices at least 3–4 mm from the edge of a business card and 5 mm or more on a flyer or poster. A frame or border very close to the edge is risky too: if the cut is off, one side ends up thinner than the other.
Download a print-ready PDF
- Open your design, or start from a template.
- Press Download and choose PDF.
- Turn on Bleed. Pozzly carries the background, bands and photos that reach the edge ⅛ inch past it. Photos keep the same framing inside the page; round shapes, text and icons stay as they are.
- Turn on Crop marks if the shop asks for them.
- Press Download.
Pozzly remembers both choices, so your next PDF for the same shop comes out the same way. The PDF also tells print software where the cut goes and how far the bleed reaches.
Before you send it
- Check the size. The PDF page is bigger than your design by the bleed (and the marks). When you order, give the shop the finished size: 3.5 × 2 inches for a US business card, A4 for a menu.
- Photos need pixels. For sharp print, a photo needs about 300 pixels for every inch it covers on paper. A photo filling an A4 page wants about 2,500 pixels across.
- Bright screen colours print duller. Pozzly's PDFs use screen colours (RGB), which nearly every digital print shop accepts and converts. Very bright greens, blues and oranges come out a little softer on paper, so order one proof before a big run.
Start from one of the business card templates below. Most of them have colour right to the edge, so turning on bleed makes them ready for print.
