Understanding Bleeds for Printing

When it comes to printing, there’s a term used called ‘Bleed” — it refers to the part of the printed sheet that is trimmed off and leave the appearance that the images are printed exactly to the edge of the sheet of paper.

Above is an example of a Template that shows all of the area for the setup:

And here’s the area that would be trimmed off leaving a 6 inch by 4 inch postcard. The cut off parts are thrown out, they are the ‘Bleed’ areas of the total printed piece.