History: why this guide exists
Who is behind this guide and what their judgement rests on
Eighth Inch Bleed is an independent guide to commercial printing in Massachusetts, written for people who are deciding rather than browsing. We are not a printer, and this site does not sell print. Our judgement rests on a method: we read what published sources say about a print job, we check each figure against the page it came from, and we compare what different sources say about the same question.
Where the sources disagree, we say so rather than choosing the answer that sounds best. This page does not tell a founding story, and it does not list years, jobs, customers or results, because none of those is a reason to trust a guide. The method is set out on Our Patch. This page is about why the guide exists at all, and it starts with a belief the published sources do not support.
The belief that a file which looks right on screen will print right
A file that looks right on a monitor has been checked by a monitor. A press does not see it that way, and the guidance a printer asks customers to follow is written for the press. Three points in that guidance cut against the screen habit, and each one can be checked against its source.
The first is bleed. Artwork that runs to the edge needs extra image beyond the trim line on every side, so a small shift in the cut does not leave a white edge. A university print shop's Print-Ready Checklist gives 0.125 inch on every side, and asks for 300 PPI at print size, warning that enlarging a placed image lowers its effective resolution. A screen shows none of this, because a screen does not cut.
The second is colour. Press printing uses the CMYK model, while screens use RGB, so artwork built for a screen will shift when it is converted for print. The point is made in How to Set Up Print Files Correctly: Bleeds, Resolution, and Color Space from Utah Valley University's printing services.
A monitor shows a file the way a monitor wants to show it, and a press prints what the file actually contains, so the check has to be made against the printer's requirements rather than against the screen.
What the facts show is not that screens are unreliable. It is that a screen answers a different question from the one a press asks. A proof on a monitor can confirm the layout and the wording. It cannot confirm the trim, the margin or the ink, and those are the three things a printer needs settled before anything is run.
The gap this guide fills, and why it is kept narrow on purpose
Some of the advice a reader meets comes from businesses that sell printing, and some comes from a single checklist with no sense of the job it is meant for. This guide sits between them. It offers a short set of checked figures, each with its source named, and a plain account of where the sources stop.
It is kept narrow on purpose. A guide that tries to cover every product, every shop and every price cannot say which of its claims it has checked, so this one covers how a print job is set up and chosen, and nothing beyond that.
What this guide refuses to do
No quotes or prices
The guide does not quote a job, give a price or state a turnaround time. A price printed on a page goes out of date, and a reader should get one from the printer in writing.
No print work of its own
The guide does not print, finish or sell anything. Its reading of print is a reading, and a reader should not mistake it for a supplier's advice on a particular job.
No ranking of businesses
The guide does not rank printers or publish best-of lists. Where a business is mentioned, the reader is pointed to what that business says it offers, so the reader can check the claim for themselves.
