Printing printers marks

Printing printers’ marks lets you display information on a page about how a work should be printed. You can specify the position of the printers’ marks on the page.

The available printers’ marks are as follows:

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Crop/fold marks — represent the size of the paper and print at the corners of the page. You can print crop/fold marks to use as guides to trim the paper. If you print multiple pages per sheet (for example, two rows by two columns), you can choose to print the crop/fold marks on the outside edge of the page so that all crop/fold marks are removed after the cropping process, or you can choose to add crop marks around each row and column. Crop/fold marks ensure that marks appear on each plate of a separated CMYK file.

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Bleed limit — determines how far an image can extend beyond the crop marks. When you use a bleed to extend the print job to the edge of the page, you must set a bleed limit. A bleed requires that the paper you are printing on is larger than the size of paper you ultimately want, and the print job must extend beyond the edge of the final paper size.

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Registration marks — are required to line up film for proofing or printing plates on a color press. They print on each sheet of a color separation.

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Color calibration bars — are color scales that print on each sheet of a color separation and ensure accurate color reproduction. To see calibration bars, the page size of the print job must be larger than the page size of the work you are printing.

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Densitometer scale — is a series of gray boxes ranging from light to dark. These boxes are required to test the density of halftone images. You can position the densitometer scale anywhere on the page. You can also customize the levels of gray that appear in each of the seven squares on the densitometer scale.

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Page numbers — helps you collate pages of an image that do not include any page numbers or do not contain page numbers that correspond to the actual number of pages

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File information — prints file information, such as, the color profile; halftone settings; name, date, and time the image was created; plate number; and job name

To print crop and fold marks

Click File

Print.

Click the Prepress tab.

Enable the Crop/fold marks check box.

If you want to print only the exterior crop/fold marks, enable the Exterior only check box.

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To print crop and fold marks, the paper on which you print must be 0.5 inches larger on all sides than the page size of the image that you are printing.

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To set crop and fold marks, see “To edit gutters.”

To print composite crop and fold marks

Click Tools

Options.

In the list of categories, double-click Global, and click Printing.

Choose Composite crop marks from the Option list.

Choose Output on all plates from the Setting list box.

To set a bleed limit

Click File

Print.

Click the Layout tab.

Enable the Bleed limit check box.

Type a value in the Bleed limit box.

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Usually, a bleed limit of 0.125 to 0.25 inches is sufficient. Any object extending beyond that uses memory needlessly and may cause problems when you print multiple pages with bleeds on a single sheet of paper.

To print registration marks

Click File

Print.

Click the Prepress tab.

Enable the Print registration marks check box.

Choose a registration mark style from the Style list box.

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To print registration marks, the paper on which you print must be 0.5 inches larger on all sides than the page size of the image that you are printing.

To print color calibration bars and densitometer scales

Click File

Print.

Click the Prepress tab.

In the Calibration bars area, enable any of the following check boxes:

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Color calibration bar

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Densitometer scales

If you want to customize the levels of gray in one of the densitometer scale squares, choose a number from the Densities list (lower values represent lighter squares), and type a new density for that square.

To print page numbers

Click File

Print.

Click the Prepress tab.

Enable the Print page numbers check box.

If you want to position the page number inside the page, enable the Position within page check box.

To print file information

Click File

Print.

Click the Prepress tab.

Enable the Print file information check box.

Type a job name in the Job name/slug line box.

If you want to position the file information inside the page, enable the Position within page check box.

To position printers’ marks

Click File

Print preview.

Click the Marks placement tool

Click the Auto-position marks rectangle button on the property bar.

Type values in the Marks alignment rectangle boxes.

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You can also change the position of printer’s marks by clicking on a printer’s mark icon in the print preview window and dragging the bounding box.

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