Thursday, August 10, 2017

adobe photoshop - Creating in PS a bleed for a die cut sticker


I am creating a album with stickers, each sticker is die cut and has a special place in the album. How do i create a bleed for each sticker that can be correctly interpreted by the machine that cuts the sticker so, in the end, to obtain a sticker that fits its special place in the album?


Here is a example: enter image description here


I will print them at a typography, the problem is, will they be able to make a exact die cut so those stickers fit exactly with the bleed i have made? do i have to export the sticker without bleed as well so they can use its shape on the stickers with bleed? do i have to add a vector path on the tiff with bleed? what is the best way? is there a better way to create a bleed for the stickers?



Answer



For this kind of project:



Not only you need to be careful about bleed, but you need to make sure your sticker is a bit bigger than the white area in your book. Otherwise it will look weird and white borders will be visible if the stickers are not perfectly applied! People don't apply stickers perfectly, you need to add a few millimeters to help them a bit.


Because of this, you have some freedom on how you want the sticker shape to be and it doesn't need (and shouldn't) be exactly the same as your white illustration.




Import your illustrations in Illustrator and trace the shapes of your dielines in Illustrator. It will be way more precise.


Printers prefer vector format for this anyway.



I suggest you isolate all your illustrations on their own files and make sure your illustrator files have the same size as your illustrations. I personally like to add trim marks to my dieline files and my artworks; this way I'm certain everything is centered when I import the dielines and the artworks in InDesign or when I prepare my final print-ready.



This is how it should look like:


Dieline and dicut of irregular shape in Adobe Illustrator



Once you'll have your outlines, you can import the "bleed" one back in Photoshop and use it to create a layer mask if you want.



One "cheat" you can do is to add a white filling on the outside part of the dashed line on my example... and place your illustration under this! This way you won't need to create clipping mask in Photoshop to hide the part of the illustration that isn't the bleed.


Note: You really don't need to add as much bleed as I did. Refer to the url at the end of this answer for bleed info.


Bleed on peel off sticker


The only line you'll provide to your printer is the dieline line, the one shown as a solid line on my example. This line should be in Spot Color (pantone for example) and NOT in CMYK. It should also be "overprint" if you don't provide it on its own file (eg. if you provide the dieline with the artwork in one file)


Printers usually prefer separate files for the print and dieline. Don't forget to also send a JPG proof with both printed illustration and dieline; the printer will be able to see what you expect as result and verify his own work.



Finally, once you'll have your artwork with the bleed AND the dieline, you can prepare your final file with the dieline + the artwork perfectly aligned. You could import all this in InDesign. You can also use Illustrator if you prefer.


Montage of dieline and artwork together



Artwork:



Illustration with bleed print-ready


Dieline:


Dieline




PS: The more corners and sides your dielines will have, the more expensive it will be; it requires more time to create the matrice but also more time to diecut the job. There's more technical issues for the guy who will do the diecut job if your corners are very pointy... it's better to use corners that are a bit rounded instead of perfectly pointy corners.


PPS: It doesn't really matter if your bleed isn't the same exact shape as your diecut. It could even be a rectangle in fact. I'm guessing the stickers will be on their own white sheets and will go in the trash after the stickers will be peeled off from the sheets and applied to the book. Where you need to be precise is with the dieline and the extra margin I suggested you.


Extra info on dielines/diecut, bleed, etc. here


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