I am thinking about having some postcards printed and have been to several websites that offer dimensions with ‘bleed’ and ‘no bleed’. What does this mean? Is it the narrow white border around the image vs. the image going all the way to the edges? Example. Also any advice on the postcard creation process is appreciated.
Bleed is the term used in printing to describe the case where the printing “goes off the edges”, in other words a “bleed page” is one where the image and/or text extends outside the area of the finished page after trimming.
It’s done to ensure that you don’t get a white border around the edge if the trimming isn’t quite in the right place. In other words, the image needs to be slightly bigger (in the example, it looks like 1/16" all round) than the finished card will be.
Exactly. In order for the image to “bleed” off the edges of the trimmed card, the printed area has to extend about 1/8" past the edge, then trimmed off. This uses more paper than if the image stops short of the edges of the paper, because the cards will be printed with more than one copy on a piece of paper and trimmed apart. With no bleed, the cards can be butted against one another, but with a bleed, there has to be a 1/4" gutter between the cards so the bleed can be trimmed off. Cards with a bleed also require more cuts when trimming to size.
As far at the creation process, if you are creating your own art on a computer, talk to your printer about what kind of files they prefer. Most professional artists use Quark Xpress, Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, and a few others. You might also find that many printers prefer Mac files to Windows, but this is not as common as it used to be.