How to add Cut / Safety / Bleed Lines to your customizable products

Zakeke offers you two ways to add cut/safety/bleed lines to your customizable products:

  1. Pro method
  2. Quick method

1. Pro method

1.1 Overview

Zakeke allows you to add the Bleed/Cut Lines by importing a PDF-Layers (OCG) file where each layer of the PDF can include the vector path that can be used for bleed lines or cut lines or any other line or mark. You can manage every single line independently.

The final PDF for printing will be obtained by overlapping the layers contained in the uploaded PDF with the design created by your customer.

 

WARNING

The bleed lines don't works with single print file addon / output.

The color limit defined inside the printing method is not applied to the final PDF output containing designs and bleed lines, simply because the opposite way would imply a recoloring of the same bleed lines.

 

1.2 Adding lines/marks to your product [pro]

You make it when you set the print area on your customizable product. When you are in the section where you can define the print area on your product, click on the button to upload a PDF (see image below)
bleed_lines_1.png

Once the PDF gets uploaded, you see a recap of all the layers included in the PDF

bleed_lines_2.png

and for each layer you have several options:

  • Layer name and description: give/change the name of the layer and give it a description if needed;

  • Visible to the end-users: check it if you want your customers to be able to see the line on the product in the customizer;

  • Include in the print-ready file: if checked, the final output will include the line;

  • Show names to the end-users: display the name of the layer/line in the customizer;

  • Clip mask: If checked, that line becomes a clipping area that shapes mask the design. Print-ready files won't be affected as they will be the same shape as the uploaded PDF document unless you activate the "Clipped print-ready file" option which means that the final output will be generated only for the clipped area instead of for the full PDF area.

  • Layers visible in cart: to display all the lines also in the thumbnail of the customized item in the cart.

IMPORTANT

  • If you use this method to add lines to your product, the print area of the product gets automatically calculated based on the size of the PDF. For example, if the PDF is the size of A4, the print area will also be A4. However, it is possible to use one of the paths imported from the PDF layers as the cut area of ​​the design viewed by the user ("clip mask" option, see above).
  • You can create the lines of the colors you prefer and the color formats you want (for example, Spot Colors, Pantone Colors, and CMYK colors) so that your printing and cutting machines can read the paths correctly.

  • The final output will be a layered PDF (along with the other formats that won't include any line).

 

1.3 How to create a PDF-Layers with Bleed, Cut and Safe-Lines

It's necessary to create a PDF Layers (OCG) with one line (vector path) for each layer.

IMPORTANT

  • The file and internal lines must be vector-based in a PDF with Layers or Optional Content Groups (OCG) format. You can use any tool to generate this type of file as long as you ensure that the tool is capable of generating a vector file of this type, such as Adobe Illustrator. Graphics tools that generate raster files, such as Gimp, should not be used.

In our example here below, we used Adobe illustrator.

We added the specific Layers

mceclip0.png

For every single Layer, we created the vector path 

mceclip0.png

Export in PDF format and will see all layers. Remember to save and check the box to export the layers. 

mceclip5.png

 

 

 

2. Quick method

2.1 Overview

This method requires you to add a simple PNG file to your product.

Use this method if you do not need an advanced system and you just need to show lines to your customers and, in case you also need them in the print-ready file, you are ok to get them as part of the final design instead of be a separate layer.

 

2.2 Adding lines/marks to your product [quick]

Once you have successfully created the customizable product, you have to:

  1. Create a transparent PNG with safety lines and bleed area with the same dimensions and shape of your product by a graphics software;
  2. Go to Pre-designed template section, select the customizable product on which you want to apply the bleed area and click on Add new template:

    • Give a name to the new pre-designed template (such as "Bleed area");

    • Set the rules on how your product can be customized (texts, images, ...);

    • Click on the symbol to upload an image and upload the image you created at step 1; resize it to fit the print area of your product.

    • Disable all options in the "element settings" so that your customers cannot replace, move, rotate, resize, delete or duplicate the image; Make sure to enable "Always on top" and "Printable" options.

    • Save it. Your product now has safety lines and bleed area.

 

Example

Let's say you offer your customers a canvas for personalization:

mceclip1.png

You have to configure it in your Zakeke back-office to make it customizable. It will appear like this in the Zakeke customizer:

mceclip2.png

To show print lines on the canvas, you need to create a transparent PNG with safety lines and the same dimensions/shape of the canvas. In this example, we made print lines as red dotted lines (the rest of the PNG is transparent):

mceclip3.png

Create a pre-designed template on the product making sure to enable the following options:

  • Always on top
  • Printable (enable this only if you need the safety lines to be included in the print file otherwise leave it unchecked).

mceclip4.png

This is what the canvas will appear now in the Zakeke customizer:

mceclip5.png

And this is when customers add texts or images, they do not cover the print lines:

mceclip6.png

And this is the final output (it won't include the bleed lines if you set it as not printable as explained above):

mceclip7.png

 

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