sharp images · clean trim · bold copies
make the best zine
a zine is only as good as it prints. here is how to size your images, keep your words clear of the cut, and lay out pages that survive a photocopier.
image sizes + resolution
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300 dpi is the target
print wants about 300 dots per inch. the editor checks it for you: click any photo and read the note beneath it. crisp means you are set, okay is borderline, fuzzy means shrink the photo on the page or swap in a bigger file.
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how many pixels you need
the math is pixels = size in mm ÷ 25.4 × 300. in plain terms, take the printed size in inches and multiply by 300, or millimeters by roughly 12. a few common full pages:
page trim size pixels at 300 dpi mini panel ~70 × 108 mm ~825 × 1275 a6 pocket 105 × 148 mm 1240 × 1748 a5 classic 148 × 210 mm 1748 × 2480 a4 210 × 297 mm 2480 × 3508 letter sheet 216 × 279 mm 2550 × 3300 those are for a photo that fills the whole page. a smaller placement needs proportionally fewer pixels.
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upload big, never upsize
always add the largest version you have. the export shrinks each image to exactly the pixels it needs and never blows a small one up, so a big source can only help. cropping zooms into the photo and spends pixels, so a tight crop wants an even bigger original.
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watch for the low-res tag
a photo whose long edge is under about 1200 px gets a low-res tag in your library. that is roughly 100 mm (4 in) at full quality: fine small, fuzzy blown up. accepted files are jpeg, png, webp and gif.
trim, safe area + bleed
- bleed (cut away)
- trim (page edge)
- safe area (keep text in)
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trim is the page edge
the trim line is where the finished page ends, the box you lay out inside and the size a reader holds. a home-printed mini never gets cut here, but a print shop trims your booklet right on this line.
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every edge is its own thing
a page edge is never just an edge. it is a fold, a scissor cut, or the raw paper edge, and each one eats your art a different way. so there is no one safe margin: leave a little more room where the risk is bigger.
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how far to stay from each edge
good gaps for a home-printed, untrimmed zine, for anything you cannot afford to lose like text. backgrounds do the opposite and run off the edge.
edge what it is leave about raw paper edge the printer can't reach the last few mm, and it may get cut 6.5 mm fold at the spine art curls into the gutter and disappears 6 mm fold at head or fore-edge folds drift as they stack up 4 mm scissor cut (mini center) a hand cut wanders more than a crease 5 mm in a hurry? stay about 7 mm from every edge and you clear them all.
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keep words in the safe area
the dashed safe line does this for you: it hugs the folds a little closer and stands off more from the raw paper edge and the gutter, since each fails a different way. keep text and anything you cannot lose inside it. toggle it with the safe area button; margin mm in settings raises the whole thing as a floor.
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bleed for full-edge art
for a photo or color that must reach the very edge, run it past the trim so a slightly off cut leaves no white sliver. on booklets, set bleed mm in settings (3 mm is plenty) and hit fill the page on the image. a home-printed mini can't truly bleed its open edges. if you need one, print the sheet a size up and trim it back by hand.
print at actual size, never fit to page. scale-to-fit shrinks and recenters the whole sheet, so every fold line shifts and these margins stop meaning anything. not sure what your printer does? run the printer test sheet first.
by format
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8-page mini
one landscape sheet, printed one side. eight panels, five folds and a single cut down the middle. the two inner pages meet that scissor cut; the outer pages open onto the raw paper edge, which wants the widest gap. no bleed, so run backgrounds right to the panel edge. see the fold how-to.
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16-page mini
one portrait sheet, printed one side, folded down to sixteen panels of the same little page (it wants an a3 sheet for the room). twice the folds, so add a millimeter to every fold gap. the four center panels touch no paper edge at all. see the 16-page fold how-to.
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home booklet
two pages per sheet in booklet order: print two-sided, fold the stack, staple the spine. it supports bleed, with trims from a6 up to letter. two gotchas: some inkjets swell the top margin to about 13 mm in two-sided mode, so keep the head clear; and past ~40 pages inner sheets creep outward and trim tighter, so keep fore-edge art loose on thick ones. see the booklet how-to.
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print-shop pdf
one page per sheet, in reading order, with your bleed added around each. a real printer trims right on the line, so you get a true full bleed (add 3 mm) and can pull safe margins in to about 5 mm. hand this to a copy shop or an online printer.
make it copy well
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lean on strong contrast
photocopiers and laser printers lean toward black and white. bold blacks and clean whites reproduce cleanly, while thin light-gray lines and pale tints can drop out. push your contrast a little harder than looks right on screen.
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check it in grayscale
most zines get copied in black and white. glance at your pages in gray and make sure they still read. don't lean on color alone to tell two things apart.
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go easy on gradients
big smooth gradients tend to print in visible steps. we bake a fine dither into the print images to smooth them out, but flat bold shapes always copy cleanest.
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print one, then the stack
run a single test copy first. check the fold lines land right and nothing important sits in a cut or crease, then run the whole batch.