CODEWITHSUNDEEP
postscript
CBH
CBH

Reputation: 83

Generate bleed area with postscript

we have a printer which prints borderless. But the documents has no bleed area. So when the paper is not correctly aligned in the printer, we see a very small white line on one or two sides of the printed paper. We convert PDF files to Postscript using Ghostscript. The postscript is send to the printer.

So I thought maybe it is possible to generate a bleed area around the original document. The only way (which I see) to generate a bleed area is to take (for example on the left side) the last tenth of a milimeter by the full document height on the edge of the document. Next, scale or repeate (?) that tenth of a milimeter in the bleed area on the left side.

But I really do not know how to do that. Has someone an idea? Or are there better ideas to solve the issue?

To execute this idea, I could take the generated PS from Ghostscript and tweak that PS.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 277

Answers (1)

KenS
KenS

Reputation: 31199

I'm not at all certain that adding bleed will help you if the media is mis-aligned. Regardless of whether the printer has or does not have borders, the printer can only print on a certain area. If the media isn't aligned with that area, the printer can't print there. Adding bleed (content outside the printable area) doesn't really help with that.

Bleed is normally used to print to an oversized media, which is then cut to the required size. So if you were printing A4, then you would print to media slightly larger than A4, then cut the printed stack down to size.

In the case of bleed like this, the printer is capable of printing beyond the edges of the final result. By printing out past the edges, any slight misalignment when trimming the media doesn't result in white space.

However, if you want to create bleed, the simplest solution is to increase the media size slightly, and scale the content to fit. If you are starting with a PDF file, set the media to be slightly oversized to your final requirements, set the -dFIXEDMEDIA switch, and also -dPDFFitPage (or in recent versions of Ghostscript, -dFitPage).

Again, taking A4 as an example, you might say -dDEVICEWIDTHPOINTS=620 -dDEVICEHEIGHTPOINTS=800 -dFIXEDMEDIA -dPDFFitPage

That will get you output which is 8 points oversized in each direction, with the content scaled to fit onto that.

Upvotes: 2

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