| name | verify-bleed-safe |
| description | Check that all text and content in a PDF stays within the printer's printable area — i.e. nothing runs into the unprintable margin where it would be clipped. Reports per-page violations with bounding boxes. Read-only — does not modify the PDF. Triggers on phrases like "verify bleed safe", "check printable margins", "will this print without clipping". |
Verify Bleed-Safe
Inspect a PDF and report any pages where content extends into the printer's unprintable margin (typically 3–6mm from each edge for office laser/inkjet printers).
This is a read-only preflight check. It modifies nothing — it only reports.
Inputs
- Input PDF path (required).
- Safe margin (optional, mm) — default 5mm. The minimum distance from page edge that content must respect.
- Per-edge override (optional) —
top=X bottom=Y left=Z right=W if the printer's unprintable margins are asymmetric.
How it works
For each page:
- Get the page MediaBox:
pdfinfo -box input.pdf or mutool show input.pdf trailer.
- Compute the "safe box" = MediaBox shrunk by the safe-margin on every side.
- Get the bounding box of all content on the page (text + images + vector). Use
gs -sDEVICE=bbox for the ink-bbox of each page:
gs -dQUIET -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=bbox input.pdf 2>&1 | grep "%%HiResBoundingBox"
- Compare content bbox against safe box. If content extends past the safe box, report:
- Page number
- Which edge(s) violated
- How far the violation extends (mm)
Output
Plain-text report:
Bleed-safe check: input.pdf (safe margin: 5mm)
PAGE 1: OK
PAGE 2: VIOLATION — text extends 2.3mm past the right edge safe zone (content bbox: ..., safe box: ...)
PAGE 3: OK
PAGE 4: VIOLATION — image extends 8.1mm past the bottom edge safe zone
...
Summary: 2 of 12 pages have bleed-safe violations.
Suggest remedies in the report:
- For minor overruns (<10mm): rerun source layout with larger margins, or scale page contents down via
gs -dPDFFitPage.
- For consistent overruns: the document may have been laid out for a printer with smaller unprintable margins — ask the user.
Tooling
ghostscript — bounding-box detection.pdfinfo (poppler-utils) — page dimensions.mutool (mupdf-tools) — alternative geometry probe.
Notes
- This check is about fit-within-printable-area. It does not address commercial-print bleeds (where you want content to extend past the trim line). For that, use
add-bleed.
- Violations don't always mean the print will fail — they mean it might clip. The printer's exact unprintable margin varies by model. 5mm is a safe default; tune for known printers.
