Creating a full page bleed in Bob Designer 3.0

With the Bob Designer software, you have full control over how you would like to design your book.  One simple, but very effective design technique is to fill your page with one full bleed image.

For those of you new to designing books, you may be unfamiliar with the term "full bleed".  Full bleed is a printing term that refers to printing from one edge of the paper to another without any borders.

In the book above, the left page has a full bleed image while the right page has a black background with the image framed within the page.

During the book production process, the pages are printed onto paper larger than the size of your book and then trimmed to size after printing.  As the pages aren't cut in exactly the same place each time, you'll need to allow for this when designing your book, by bleeding your image past the edge of the page, or you might end up with a small white line along the edge of your pages.  We recommend a 3mm bleed for all inner pages and a 10mm bleed for the cover.

The best way to achieve a full bleed in the Bob Designer software is to set your chosen image as a "background".   This will set the image into the page with a full bleed automatically.  This can be done for the left or right page or across a double page spread.

The option to set your image as a background appears when you right click on the thumbnail.

Or you can simply click on the image thumbnail and then choose from the three background layout options below the thumbnail area.

You can see when you click on the background image that the edges have been extended past the page.  This is indicated by the solid yellow line around the image.

While the background image option works great if you want to fill either one page or a double page spread, you might like to get a little more creative with your layouts.

Our photographic paper books are ideal for creative layouts as you don't lose any image down the gutter.

A great option is to have one large image fill 3/4's of a double page, teamed with a smaller image.

Here's how to design this page.

1.From the pre-set layouts, select the layout below which fills half a page and with bleed on the top and bottom. Drag and drop the layout into the righthand page.

2. Click on the red square on the left side of the image frame and stretch the frame across to fill the left page plus an extra 3mm for bleed.

3. Then drag and drop the image into the frame and add any other images or text to the page.

Why not try this out when you're designing your next Bob Book?