What is image transparency, and how does it occur? What is the bleed area? What’s a safe zone? Why do we care about these in printing?
Image transparency
Image transparency occurs when your image is clear or does not fill the entire print area, allowing the print to display the effects/colors of the image or design behind it.
Transparency in our system typically occurs when an image is incorrectly positioned in our image editor. This may happen when you zoom out too much and do not fill the entire printing area with your design.
When this occurs, your image may be printed, but because it doesn't fill the entire printing area, transparent pixels will be added to fill the gap. They will be printed in the product's base color.
Refunds and reprints for image transparency issues
If your order has an image transparency issue caused by incorrect image positioning, we cannot offer refunds or reprints at our cost to your customers. You are responsible for covering the costs (for refunds or reprints) of any issues with your product caused by incorrect positioning that result in image transparency.
Differences between the bleed area and the safe zone
Bleed is a printing term for the space in an image that extends beyond the area that will be physically trimmed to create the product.
Image files that contain bleed prevent products like pillows, which are first printed and then sewn together, from having a blank border on your artwork. In other words, your artwork will be printed edge-to-edge. The Bleed area gets cut off during the production process, but the safe zone does not.
- Please note that our cut & sew products are sewn by hand, so slight variations between the mock-up and the print area actually cut in production are to be expected.
All of the design elements you want to have printed should be within the safe zone (shown below), but make sure the bleed area is filled up too:
The bleed area is the outer dark red area in our product hub, and everything within that space will be trimmed off. You should still extend your design to the edge of this area to avoid irregular white borders.
The trim line is the outer white dotted line that shows the cut/sew line for the product. You’ll have to extend your design past this line to account for a cutting margin of error. Anything in this area might be trimmed off slightly in some products.
The safe zone is the inner white dotted line. Any artwork within this line will not be cropped, so keep all your important content within this white box.