Cropmarks (Beschnittmarken)

If you print a professional book where graphics go until the very edge of the page, you need to give a file with cropmarks (Beschnittmarken) to the printer. This is how to produce them in LaTeX, it is actually very simple with the package crop:

\usepackage[cam,width=154truemm,height=216truemm,center]{crop}

The book in question was A5 paper which has a size of 148mm x 210mm. I wanted to have 3 more milimeters to each side. This makes the final paper size I want to have 154mm x 216mm, which I have given above. As I want the markings equally on each side, I use the option center to center the content in the middle of the larger page. The option cam print standard cropmarks (this is also the default).

Now the only thing left to do is adjust the graphics. For every page where a graphic goes to the edge of the page, increase it a little bit over the margin. There are several ways to do that, depending on what exactly it is you do. This is an example for a colored background image that fills the whole page. The important part is \dimexpr\paperwidth+6mm which just adds 6mm to the height of the picture:

\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture, overlay]
\node[inner sep=0pt] at (current page.center) { 
  \includegraphics[width=\dimexpr\paperwidth+6mm\relax,
      height=\dimexpr\paperheight+6mm\relax]
    {img/background1}
};
\end{tikzpicture}
This entry was posted in LaTeX and tagged , by swk. Bookmark the permalink.

About swk

I am a software developr, data scientist, computational linguist, teacher of computer science and above all a huge fan of LaTeX. I use LaTeX for everything, including things you never wanted to do with LaTeX. My latest love is lilypond, aka LaTeX for music. I'll post at irregular intervals about cool stuff, stupid hacks and annoying settings I want to remember for the future.