Generating different clip paths (bleed) on either side of a design

The procedure that follows walks you through the generation of bleed on both sides of a design. This is generally the case when you want to apply artwork also onto the side that is on the inside of a packaging item.

To generate clip paths (bleeds) on both the front and rear sides

  1. On the Layout toolbar, click Generate Bleed by Levels of Importance .

A contextual edit bar appears above the graphical area.

Marking areas

You start by marking out the zones that you want to the bleed to cover (important) and those that must be free of bleed (unimportant).

NOTE: Marking out the zones has the following meaning: We use the marking to assign a level of importance to each zone. That is, which zone is more important and which one comes second. The different levels of importance lets us define different bleeds to each zone. Note that no bleed is necessary for No Artwork zones (those that carry no printed matter).

  1. Select the areas on which no artwork will be placed: click No Artwork , and then, in the design, consecutively click the areas that will be free of artwork.
  2. Select critical artwork areas: in the contextual edit bar click Important Area , and then, in the design, consecutively click the respective areas.
  3. Select less critical artwork areas: in the contextual edit bar click Unimportant Area , and then, in the design, consecutively click the respective areas.
  4. (Optional) If you want to mark the entire design as the same type of clipping area, click Set All Regions .

The Set Default Clipping Level dialog box appears, in which you can set a default clipping area that Prinect will use in future. (Select the option that you want, and then click the Set As Default For Future Jobs check box.)

After you have marked out the important and unimportant areas, the design should look something like this:

Generating the front side bleed

  1. We then move to generating bled on the design's front side. First, make sure the Different Front Rear button is pressed in.
  1. To generate the bleed, click Generate Bleed .

The Bleed Generations Options dialog box appears, in which you set the offsets for the bleed.

Bleed Offset In this group, we enter values for how far the bleed will lie off the outer contours of the important and unimportant areas. NOTE: In the general case, the value for the bleed along the important areas is greater than that for the bleed along the unimportant areas.
Important areas How far away from the outer contours of the important areas the bleed will lie.
Unimportant areas How far away from the outer contours of the unimportant areas the bleed will lie.
Round With Choose whether to use arcs or lines for the angle roundings of the bleed.
Angle threshold Available when the Line option is selected. This is the greatest value that Prinect may use when rounding adjacent bleed lines.
Generate current side bleed (side) Prinect will apply the set bleed only to the side that is currently facing you.
Generate identical front and rear bleeds Prinect will apply the set bleed values both the facing side and the reverse sides.

IMPORTANT: While working, this dialog box may show various warnings depending on specific situations. Pay attention to the warnings and take measures accordingly. The warnings alert to specifics in the generation of bleed.

  1. To generate the bleed, enter the offset values, and then click Generate Bleed .

Prinect applies the bleed around the areas inicated as Important and/or Unimportant. No bleed is generated for the areas marked No Artwork.

Indicating the applied bleed in the Layers & Objects table

The applied bleed is indicated also in the Layers & Objects table. Depending on the selected application, you can see different table entries:

NOTE: This is visible when you click outside the structural layer in the upper section of the Layers & Objects table.

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Generating the rear side bleed

We now move to generating the bleed on the rear side.

  1. On the bleed toolbar, click View Back .

Prinect switches the design and we now view its rear side.

TIP: Notice the applied front side bleed, which is shown in a dashed line.

Because of the technological requirements of the product, we need the rear side bleed applied on different areas. We proceed by marking out these areas.

  1. On the bleed toolbar, use the No Artwork , Important Areas and Unimportant Areas buttons to mark the zones that will define the bleed area.
  1. When you have marked out the zones to be covered by the bleed, click Generate Bleed .

The Bleed Generations Options dialog box appears.

  1. Enter the bleed offset value for the bleed. They may be the same as the ones for the front bleed, or different as your case requires.
  2. When ready, click OK. Prinect applies the new bleed.

Notice the two bleeds: the front side one is indicated by a dashed line, while the rear side bleed (facing you) is in black. This is the case because the bleed values for the front and rear sides are here different. If you make them identical, the two bleed indicating lines will overlap producing a single two-color line.

Indicating the applied bleed in the Layers & Objects table

The applied bleed is indicated also in the Layers & Objects table. We now see the two generated bleeds — for the front and the rear sides.

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