How to Add Bleed in Photoshop: Setting Up Bleed Area for Printing | instantprint

If you’re printing something with a commercial printer, such as flyers, business cards or posters, you’ll need to add bleed area. This video will show you a step-by-step method for adding bleed to your design using Photoshop to make sure your artwork is set up correctly for print.

What is Bleed?

During commercial printing, print is trimmed down to size by a guillotine. Trimming isn’t always exact – it can be an mm or two out, which sounds like a tiny, insignificant amount, but is actually very noticeable if it leaves a white border around your artwork. The bleed area is a section around the edge of your artwork to ensure that no white border is left after cutting. We suggest a 3mm bleed area.

How to Add Bleed in Photoshop
You’ll need to manually add bleed to your document in Photoshop. To do this:
1. Go to View - Rulers to add rulers
2. Right click the ruler and change the unit of measurement to mm
3. Drag the blue ruler lines to the edge of the canvas – they’ll snap to fit the edge when you let go
4. Go to Image -Canvas
5. Add 6mm to the width and height (this is your bleed)

For more information on adding bleed to artwork, including in a range of other popular design software programs, check out our full bleed guide here: https://www.instantprint.co.uk/prints...

Alternatively, here’s exactly how to set up a print-ready file in Photoshop: https://www.instantprint.co.uk/prints...