5 by 7 cards: trim, bleed and the safe zone
Vishra, Vishful Studio. . About 5 minutes to read.
Every print file has three invisible lines. Once you know which is which, most printing surprises stop happening. Here they are for a 5 by 7 card, with every number worked out.
Three lines, three jobs
A printer does not print a card at exactly 5 by 7 inches. It prints on a bigger sheet and cuts the card out. The cut is never perfect to the hair, so a print file plans for a little wobble in both directions.
- Trim is the finished size, 5 by 7 inches. This is the size you type when you create the design.
- Bleed is extra background that runs past the trim on every side, commonly 0.125 inch (an eighth of an inch) for cards in the US, or 3 mm where printers work in metric. It gets cut off. Its job is to make sure a slightly off cut shows more colour, never a white sliver.
- Safe zone is a margin inside the trim. Anything that must not be cut, like names, the date or someone’s face, stays inside it. An eighth of an inch is the usual minimum. A quarter inch gives small text more room, so it does not look cramped against the edge.
The numbers for a 5 by 7 card
Print resolution is usually 300 pixels per inch (ppi) for anything with photos. Multiply inches by 300 to get pixels, and by 25.4 to get millimetres.
| Line | Inches | Millimetres | Pixels |
|---|---|---|---|
| With bleed | 5.25 by 7.25 | 133.35 by 184.15 | 1575 by 2175 |
| Trim | 5 by 7 | 127 by 177.8 | 1500 by 2100 |
| Safe zone | 4.75 by 6.75 | 120.65 by 171.45 | 1425 by 2025 |
The bleed adds 0.125 inch on each side, so 0.25 inch in total to each measurement. The same logic gives the safe zone in the other direction. If your printer asks for 3 mm bleed instead, the with-bleed size is 133 by 183.8 mm. The print size calculator does this for 4 by 6, A5, A6 and banner sizes too, so you never have to do it on the back of an envelope.
Setting it up in Canva
- Create the design at trim size. Choose Create a design, then Custom size, enter 5 and 7, set the unit to inches, and create it. Type the trim size, not the size with bleed.
- Show the bleed. In the File menu, open Rulers and guides and choose Show print bleed. A border appears around the page. Stretch any background or full-bleed photo out to its edge.
- Show the margins. In the same menu, choose Show margins. Treat that dashed line as your safe zone and keep text inside it.
- Export with the bleed included. Share, then Download, then PDF Print as the file type, with Crop marks and bleed turned on.
Open the PDF afterwards and look at the corners. You should see the artwork carry on past the small crop marks. If the colour stops exactly at the marks, the bleed is missing.
Everything here is common practice, not a rule every printer follows. Some shops want more bleed, some want no crop marks, some want an image file rather than a PDF. Read their file guide before you order and follow it over anything on this page.
Is my photo big enough?
To fill the front of a 5 by 7 card edge to edge at 300 ppi, a photo needs to be about 1575 by 2175 pixels or larger. Most phone cameras take photos bigger than that. A photo filling a smaller frame needs fewer pixels: a frame 3 inches wide needs about 900 pixels across.
Below roughly 200 ppi you may start to see softness on a printed photo, especially in faces and fine text. Screenshots and photos saved from chat apps are the usual culprits, because they are often resized before they reach you. Ask for the original file instead.
Checks to run before a file goes to print
- No text, faces or logos outside the safe zone.
- Backgrounds reach the bleed edge on all four sides, including the back of a double-sided card.
- Thin borders sit well inside the safe zone. A frame line close to the trim shows every bit of cutting wobble, so keep it generous or leave it off.
- The PDF opens at 5 by 7 plus bleed, with crop marks at the corners.
- One test print at home at 100 percent scale, to read every word on paper.