InDesign for QuarkXPress Users [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

The Marks & Bleeds Panel

The last panel we'll discuss in this chapter, Marks & Bleeds, lets you specify which printer's marks should appear around the printed page, as well as how big the bleed area should be (see Figure 93-3). QuarkXPress offers these choices on the Document and Bleed tabs respectively.

Printer's Marks

If you want page marks around your printed page in XPress (trim marks, registration marks, page information, and so on), you turn on the Registration checkbox; InDesign offers much finer control, letting you turn on or off five different types of page marks:

• Crop Marks: Thin rules which tell your commercial printer where to trim the page.




• Bleed Marks: Thin rules which mark the bleed area (described below). We rarely turn this on.




• Registration Marks: Printer's targets which are used for aligning color plates (so they're only relevant for color separations).




• Color Bars: Gray and colored squares used for measuring ink density.




• Page Information: This includes the file name, page number, date and time, and plate color name (when printing color separations).

You can turn on all the marks by checking All Printer's Marks, or you may turn on only those which you wish. The Type popup menu could theoretically let you choose a different sort of registration mark, but we've never seen anything but the Default option available. The Weight of crop and bleed marks can be set in points. The Offset specifies the distance between the edge of the page and the page marks; the default is 6 points (we usually set this higher, to 9 or 12 points).

Bleed Area

When you create artwork that extends all the way to a page edge, you have to actually extend it beyond the edge; this is called a bleed. However, like XPress, InDesign only prints objects beyond the page edge if you increase the bleed settings in the Print dialog box. And, like XPress, you can choose different amounts of bleed for each side of your document.