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Set bleed across multiple documents

Participant ,
Jul 20, 2017 Jul 20, 2017

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A printer is requesting a 5mm bleed instead of a 3mm bleed on a 1000 page publication I'm working on. Is there a way to change the bleed across multiple (100+) documents? I'm still going to have to go in and resize all the images to fit the new bleed so it's not a huge problem if not, it would just streamline the process to some degree.

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Community Expert ,
Jul 20, 2017 Jul 20, 2017

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Master pages.

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Participant ,
Jul 20, 2017 Jul 20, 2017

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I was under the impression that master pages and document setup were separate from one another, in that, changing the bleed was exclusive to the document rather than something that could be controlled from syncing the master? If not then this is a great solution! I'll give it a go.

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Community Expert ,
Jul 20, 2017 Jul 20, 2017

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Not that I know of - you would have to open all docs and change the bleed settings.

You could ask in the scripting forum.

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Community Expert ,
Jul 20, 2017 Jul 20, 2017

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That's not too hard, this ought to work:

for (d=0; d<app.documents.length; d++)

{

app.documents.documentPreferences.documentBleedUniformSize = true;

app.documents.documentPreferences.documentBleedTopOffset = "5mm";

}

Change the bleed to whatever amount & unit you like.

If you also want to immediately save the changed documents, add

app.documents.save();

above the closing brace line.

[There is much more that you can do with scripting. Theoretically, I someone can write a script that scans your entire hard drive – or even (why not!) all attached drives – for InDesign documents, open them, change the bleed, save and close, overwriting the originals. However, there is a limit to how much I trust such a fully-automated, blind and dumb script, and I can imagine lots of things that could possibly go wrong and invisibly wreck an unknown number of documents.

At the very least, manually opening and closing batches of files ensures you will see various warnings and errors that InDesign may throw at you.]

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Participant ,
Jul 20, 2017 Jul 20, 2017

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Thanks Jongware! I assumed that all I would need was a little script. My knowledge of scripting however is incredibly minimal, what do I do with this now? How do I turn it into a functional script?

Also I want the inside margin to be 0, would that be something like this?

for (d=0; d<app.documents.length; d++) 

app.documents.documentPreferences.documentBleedUniformSize = false

app.documents.documentPreferences.documentBleedTopOffset = "5mm";

app.documents.documentPreferences.documentBleedBottomOffset = "5mm"

app.documents.documentPreferences.documentBleedInsideOffset = "0mm"

app.documents.documentPreferences.documentBleedOutsideOffset = "5mm"

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Community Expert ,
Jul 20, 2017 Jul 20, 2017

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Hi,

the question is what will happen, if you do not resize all elements that extend to bleed and are perfect with a 3 mm bleed?
Usually objects that leave the page with 3 mm should be ok also with a 5 mm bleed. Show me a production process where this is not ok and a bleed of 5 mm is required so that the extra 2 mm have a visual impact on the printed and bound product.

What is the binding of the publications?

Regards,
Uwe

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Community Expert ,
Jul 20, 2017 Jul 20, 2017

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A follow-up on this:

If there is no visually impact of the extra 2 mm then you could simply use a custom PDF export preset for providing print-ready PDFs where bleed is set to 5 mm and you are good to go. Then you need no script to change bleed from 3 to 5 mm on the documents.

Regards,
Uwe

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Participant ,
Jul 20, 2017 Jul 20, 2017

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If I understand correctly you're asking what's the point in adding that extra 2mm. We've just started using this completely redundant pre-production process with the idea that it'll format everything perfectly for the printer however to output any files using it you need to tick a load of boxes, one of the checklist items is 'Bleed is set to 5mm on every edge but inside' so unless this is ticked I can't use this software to export PDF's. The reason it's set to 5mm instead of the usual (and perfectly functional) 3mm is because it's a blanket piece of software for the entire company, some parts of the company create books and then scale them down to become pocket sized, if the bleed's set to 5mm then they don't have to resize the files, they can just get the printer to shrink the PDF's. Unfortunately this means that I have to change the bleed on everything to output PDFs however stupid the process is.

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Guide ,
Jul 20, 2017 Jul 20, 2017

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My commiserations!

But if this is just to fool an overcautious setting in a software preflight check, and you know that 3mm will be fine in reality, then Laubender's solution of using a PDF preset should work.

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Participant ,
Jul 20, 2017 Jul 20, 2017

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Hahaha thanks, Laubender is correct in a sense, I don't need to actually resize the images to fit the new bleed, unfortunately it won't let me make PDFs using any preset unless these checkboxes are ticked so I have to change the document settings! Bunch of bureaucrats

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