I can make a booklet that folds & staples. the problem I’m having is that if I have bleed (.125”): my trim marks are .125” away from the fold. Any suggestions? Here are the steps I’ve followed. My doc is 4” x 5”. My page set-up is 5” x 6” to allow for trim marks & .125” bleed. I create a .ps, distill it & open the PDF in PDF clerk. I set the box to use Bleed box & like I said my trim marks are .125” away from the center fold. Please tell me what I’m missing. Thanks

Hi,

If you _use_ the bleed box, then only the part of the original page enclosed by that box wil be drawn. I don’t think that is what you want. You probably want to show the crop box or the media box (which I think will be the same in your PDF).

Does the distilled PDF get created with the bleed box specified? If not, either define it using the inspector, or turn on manual trim/fold marks in the document settings (page tab) and enter a value for the insets.

The “use box” feature is for controlling what part of the original PDF is used to draw a page. Depending on settings this may influence the page size, and by default it does. So if your PDF does have the trim box defined, and you “use” the trim box, then the part outside the trim box will not be drawn, and you probably end up with a smaller page also. You want to show the whole media and impose that and within that environment the display boxes should function as you expect. PDFClerk offers quite some flexibility here, so that you can, for expample, “use” the bleed box, so only the contents that fall within it get drawn, and still define you own independent trim and bleed marks in the resulting PDFClerk pages. I can expound on this if it is not totally clear. If you haven’t already a good look at the Help file may help clarify the system a bit better.

Thanks for yor reply.
I’m still not getting it. I use media box & when I go to impose a book; my inside trim marks are now .5” away from the fold marks. The trim marks on the left side of page1 & the right side of page2 should be right on top of the fold mark. Another way of saying this is the bleed gets cut off in the center of s saddle stiched book. Somehow I’m getting the same amount of bleed on all 4 sides of every page when what I need is bleed on only 3 sides of each page (ie in this case a vertical gutter of -1” ?). I’m going to try to include an attachment when I post this in hopes it will help clarify what my writing did not. thanks again.

I see. If you don’t mind the bleed marks not showing at all in the middle, then you could set the bleed marks manually in the imposition template:

- Open the impositions editor
- Select the two up imposition that you are using
- Click the display boxes tab
- Select “Manual Bleed Box Size”
- Enter the desired values

The marks will now only draw along the edges of the imposed sheet, not along the inner sides of the individual pages.

If you do need the bleed marks to show in the middle along the fold mark let me know. Also, could you please send me this test file (the PDFClerk document) so that I can have a clearer picture of exactly what you are doing, and possibly find a solution.

Here’s the file. Moving marks around is not so much the problem now. I seem to have 2 choices 1) no bleed or 2) .125” bleed on all 4 sides of each page. I can’t send anything but images so I’ll re-name the PDFClerk file W .jpg. When you get it rename it so it will open properly

That did not work. I’ve relaxed the settings for attachments a bit, so you can try uploading it again. Alternatively email it to the SintraWorks info address.

Here’s today’s attempt to send the PDFClerk file.

All right, after some private messages to get a clear picture of what the desired result was, I think I have found it. (And since your mail server seems to be having trouble processing my last email I’ll go ahead and post your last description and the solution here):

>The book is 4” x 5”.
>That means if we were to print & cut out one page it would be 4” x 5” and the decorative border would be right on the edge of the paper.
>In a Saddle stitch book the frames from each page would touch each other in the center.
>The extra color that appears outside the frame is bleed.
>It should not show in the center of the book
>(consider this: each page is 4” x 5” the flat book should measure 8” x 5” & when folded it will be 4” x 5”
>What I’m getting now is a page that is 4.125” x 5” Because the bleed is showing and printing in the center of the book).

Here´s the solution: Basically you have defined a bleed for the inside of the pages, that is not really true so to say, since it shouldn’t be printed at all. So what you would do is to define the bleed box such that it excludes the inside bleed margin of the pages. To do this you can follow these steps:

- Set imposition mode to none and show the media box so that you can change the display boxes.
- Select page 1
- In the Inspector panel select the right most tab for the Display Box Inspector.
- From the popup select bleed box
- Now, for this first page, whose inside margin is to the left side keep the right margin at 0.375 inch and set the left margin to 0.5 inch
- Activate the document window again so that the first page in the list lights up and then press command-A to select all pages. (Make sure that the display box inspector still reads “Showing for page 1”. (If it doesn’t deselect and reselect page 1 while holding down the command key.)
-  Select “Mirror margins on opposite pages” in the inspector.
- Click “Apply settings to all selected pages”. This will apply the settings of the currently showing page (page 1) to all selected pages, but exchanging the left and right margin on pages that are on the opposite side of the fold.

Then set the document to use the bleed box again and turn to your custom imposition layout. You should now get what you were after. Attached you’ll find a snapshot of the inspector with the correct settings for the bleed box, and the result in PDFClerk when using your custom layout template.

For interested readers of this thread the corrrect settings for the imposition template are basically a slight adaptation of the default 2-up layout:
2 Columns, 1 Row
Slot Size: “First Page Size Fixed”
No groups or gutters
No flipping
Page Distribution front: 4-1, back: 2-3
Display Boxes->Trim box: “Derive trim box from trim marks”
Global Signature

In the document settings, under the paper tab the Trim/Fold Marks are set to Manual and both vertical and horizontal trim marks have an inset of 0.125 inch. (and a gap of 0.069inch but that is not crucial). This in combination with the “derive trim box from trim marks” setting in the template will cause the marks to be drawn only on the outside edges of the pages, and not in the middle of the sheet where the fold will be.

I hope this nails it.

That’s it That’s fantastic!!
This is just what I hoped could be done. I could see how the other imposition layouts worked but this one really had me stumped thank you very much for your time and effort!