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Export a print-ready PDF with bleed, crop marks and a safe zone

Updated 2026-09-04

A print shop needs more than a picture of your design. It needs the exact trim size, artwork that carries on 3 mm past the edge (the bleed) so no white hairline shows after the cut, nothing important inside the last few millimetres (the safe zone), crop marks that say where to cut, and pictures with enough pixels for 300 dpi. Miss one and the job comes back, or worse, prints wrong.

Ridvay Studio does all of it from one panel. Pick the physical size, and the canvas shows the bleed band, the trim line and the safe zone on your design. A preflight lists every problem a printer would flag — art that stops at the edge, a logo too close to the trim, a photo too small for the size, a screen colour ink cannot reproduce — with a one-click fix for each. The export is a PDF at physical size with the bleed included, crop marks outside the artwork and an info line for the printer.

Unlike a fixed “3 mm bleed” checkbox, the size, bleed and safe margin are yours to set in millimetres or inches, so the file matches what your printer asked for.

How to do it

  1. Open the Print panel

    With your design open, click Share in the top bar and choose “Print-ready PDF…”. The Print panel opens on the right, and the canvas immediately shows the bleed band (orange, outside the page), the trim line (the page edge) and the dashed blue safe zone.

  2. Choose the trim size

    Pick a preset under “Trim size” — A6 to A0, DL, business cards, US Letter and Legal, 12×18 to 24×36 in posters, and 2×6 to 4×8 ft banners — or type a custom width and height. The page keeps its orientation. If your page shape doesn’t match the size, the preflight says how many millimetres would be lost and offers to resize the page.

  3. Set bleed, safe margin and resolution

    The defaults are what most printers ask for: 3 mm bleed and 3 mm safe margin (⅛ in for inch sizes), crop marks on, 300 dpi. Change them to whatever your print shop specified. The overlay on the canvas updates as you type.

  4. Read the preflight

    The list under “Preflight” is sorted by severity. Red is a problem the printer will reject or that will print badly (a picture far below the needed resolution, a page shape that doesn’t fit the size). Orange is worth fixing (art that touches the edge without reaching the bleed, text under 5 pt, something inside the safe margin). Blue is advice (a neon colour that will print duller).

  5. Fix what can be fixed in one click

    Each fixable issue has a button: “Extend into bleed” stretches edge-touching art past the trim, “Move inside” nudges an element into the safe zone, “Use print-safe colour” swaps a colour for the nearest one ink can hold, “Resize page” matches the page to the trim shape. “Fix all” does every mechanical fix as one step, and ⌘Z undoes it.

  6. Replace pictures that are too small

    A photo’s resolution can’t be invented. If the preflight says a picture prints at, say, 90 dpi at this size, use a larger original (right-click the picture to replace it), make it smaller on the page, or accept it for a banner read from a distance — banners use a lower threshold on purpose.

  7. Export the PDF

    Click “Export print-ready PDF”. Every page is rendered with its bleed at the resolution you set, placed at physical size, and the crop marks and a small info line (title, size, bleed, dpi, page number) are drawn in the margin outside the bleed so they never touch your artwork. Send that file to the printer.

Tips

  • Design on the page as usual and let the bleed live outside it: anything that should run off the edge just needs to extend past the trim line, which “Extend into bleed” does for you.
  • Keep logos, phone numbers and prices inside the dashed safe zone. Trimming is accurate to about a millimetre, not to a pixel.
  • Text and shapes are vector-sharp at any size; only photos and uploaded pictures are limited by their pixels. The panel tells you the effective dpi of each one.
  • For a banner or a tarpaulin, pick the banner sizes: the preflight relaxes the resolution bands because large format is viewed from metres away.
  • Turn crop marks off if your printer wants a bleed-only file; the PDF is then exactly the bleed box.

Frequently asked questions

Is the PDF in CMYK?
The PDF is exported in RGB with print-safe colour checks; the print shop converts to their press profile, which is also how Canva and most online tools work. The preflight flags colours outside the typical CMYK gamut and offers the nearest printable substitute, so the conversion holds no surprises.
What bleed should I use?
Three millimetres (⅛ inch) is the standard for flyers, cards, posters and menus. Some large-format printers ask for 5–10 mm on banners and tarpaulins; type whatever your printer specifies in the Bleed field.
Does the bleed change my normal exports?
No. The page stays the trim size, and PNG, SVG, ordinary PDF, PowerPoint, GIF and video exports are unchanged. Only the print-ready PDF captures the wider bleed box.
What resolution do I need?
Three hundred dpi is the norm for anything read up close. The preflight warns at 150 dpi and flags 100 dpi and below; for banners wider than 24 inches the bands drop to 100 and 60 dpi.
Can I print a multi-page document?
Yes. Every page of the design becomes a page of the PDF with its own bleed, marks and info line, in order.

Try it on your own design

Free to start, nothing to install.

Open Ridvay Studio

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