Adobe ILLUSTRATOR 6.0, Online Manual, Page: 766 / 893

766
Specifying the bleed area
Bleed is the amount of artwork that falls
outside of the bounding box, or crop
marks and trim marks. You can include
bleed in your artwork as a margin of
error—to ensure that the ink is still
printed to the edge of the page after
the page is trimmed, or to ensure that
an image can be stripped into a keyline
in a document. Once you create the art-
work that extends into the bleed, you
can use Illustrator to specify the extent
of the bleed.
By default, Illustrator applies a bleed of
18 points. This means that the artwork
extends 18 points beyond the crop
marks on your film. The maximum
bleed you can set is 72 points; the
minimum bleed is 0 points.
The size of the bleed you use depends
on its purpose. A press bleed (that is,
an image that bleeds off the edge of
the printed sheet) should be at least
18 points. If the bleed is to ensure that
an image fits a keyline, it needs to be no
more than 2 or 3 points. Your print shop
can advise you on the size of the bleed
necessary for your particular job.