Help - setting up a document for A4 printing

Question

Hi everyone,
I am very new to InDesign - using CS5.5. Trying to set up my first A4 document for printing. I an unsure of the printers settings but just want to check in the document - i need to have my background image right to edge of the bleed (3mm), and any text needs to be kept inside the magenta box - or can it go right out to the black line?
My image isn't quite big enough to go right to the top on the bleed line so i have used the same color rectanlge at the top . . . will this work? You can tell its a differnt image. Needs to go right to the edge of the page.
Is there any I need to do specifically to set this up to be printed ? Thanks for any ideas/suggestions/comments

Answer 1

Bleed is area outside the theoretical trim area of your page and it is used to compensate for misalignments during cutting. A typical bleed would be 1/8" or 3mm and any art or color that is intended to reach to the edge of the page after trimming should extend beyond the page edge (black line) by that amount. Set up the document at the trim size (in this case A4) and then press the more options button in the document setup dialog to reveal the Bleed and Slug fields. Enter the bleed amount and press OK and you'll see a new red guide outside the page boundary. Is this a facing apges document? How many pages? How will it be bound?
I'm guessing the Magenta box woould be the margin guides. These are set by you according to what you want, so there is no hard and fast rule for where they might be. Text and other critical content should always be set inside the page bound at least as much as the bleed allowance, however (and I prefer more), because if the cutting is off it will shift the trim outside the page area on one edge, but also inside the page by the same amount on the opposite edge and you don't want the text to be cut off or crowded at the edge.
If your photo is not large enough to extend into the bleed area you shoud either enlarge it, if that won't reduce the resolution too much, find another photo that is big enough, or redisign the page so the phot itself does not need to bleed. A transition form a photo to a colored background, no matter how similar, is nearly always visible.