I'm trying to put together a newsletter using an full bleed image as the background. I've imported the image OK and it looks fine but I need to check that I have bled the image completely off the page so that, when I send it to the printer, there are no white spaces. I can't see how to do this. Any ideas?
Huge thanks
Ailsa
Apple Pages
Create a page 31.7cm x 23cm allowing 1cm all round then draw lines on the 1 cm marks but make them 1 mm short so they don't touch the real corners ie 0.9cm long. Make the lines .5pt thick and 100% cmyk. Drag in guides on the 1 cm marks and use the Metrics Inspector to help with positioning.
This will fix the problem of the crops but there are a lot of other issues to making a Pages document a printable pdf file. Principally in ensuring the colors are all workable cmyk and maintaining sufficient resolution. Particularly where there is any transparency such as in shadows, reflections and 3D objects, by default OSX renders these at 72dpi only which is way too low.
If your Printer has Macs and has Pages installed he can see if he can successfully run the Pages file directly to his RIP, but depending on the RIP he may still have problems with the transparency.
Always, always, aways discuss your job with the Printer who will advise you whether it will meet their requirements. Most Printers do not want to spend a fortune on a poor bet, just so you can save on professional software. It does not make financial sense and they may shift the onus on you for anything that goes wrong and costs money and time to fix.
Peter
Pages does not have bleeds.
If you want them for your printer you are going to have to create an oversize page with crop marks in the corner.
Peter
btw Pages is not really suitable for Commercial Press. Speak to your Printer to see if they are happy with you giving them a Pages file for output, pdfs produced from Pages have their own set of problems.
The printer is happy with a pdf but the bleeds might be a problem. Not sure how to create an oversized page and put crop marks in the corner... Sounds a bit advanced for me and no direction on how to do it in the manual. Any thoughts? I want to end up with an A4-sized page once printed, where the image and a strap of colour along the top bleed off the page.
Thanks, Peter. I am caught a bit betwix and between. I design the newsletters for my husband's company and now need Mac software rather than PC-based, which I had used before. Trying to find something that is not Creative Suite at great expense has been difficult...hence Pages.
Well it depends on your knowledge and skill and what your Printer is happy with.
I'm pretty experienced and expert at making the most unlikely software do stuff it wasn't intended for and I'd be very hesitant at using Pages for anything beyond fairly straight forward layouts. Straight forward layouts being clean cut vector text, shapes and lines without 3D charts, fancy borders, bitmap transparency, shadows, reflections etc.
If you are prepared to put a lot of manual checking and some initial planning and testing into the job you may survive reasonably intact.
What were you using on the PC? The only software I can think of in a reasonable price range but with semi-Pro features is Serif Software's line of DTP software. Personally I never bothered with it, but on paper it looks acceptable.
If you want bleeds, crop marks and some basic imposition on the Mac without breaking the bank, Swift Publisher will do those but still has issues with color management and lacks a range of Pages' better features.
Quark XPress and Adobe Indesign really are THE tools for Pro DTP no matter what platform you are on.
Peter
PS Click on my blue name and email me a sample pdf of your previous newsletters and I'll let you know if it will work in Pages and if not what the issues are and what to avoid.
How do I create a full bleed image in Pages?
