How to Use Crop Marks in Adobe Illustrator

Crop Marks, which are also known as Trim Marks, are the indicators of where you want your printed artwork to be cut. In some software, you need to create crop marks manually. Luckily, Adobe Illustrator comes with features that automatically arrange the crop marks' position automatically.

What are Crop Marks?

Crop marks are the marks positioned at the corners of an artwork. They indicate where to have the final trim for the artwork. Crop Marks help us to see the exact size of a document and guide us in trimming away the outer edges of the file. Crop Marks are for commercial use, printing business cards for instance.

Creating Crop Marks Around Objects

Step 1

Select the Selection Tool (keyboard shortcut V) from the left toolbar.

Step 2

Select the object you want to create crop marks around using the selection tool.

Step 3

Go to the Object menu from the overhead toolbar and select Create Trim Marks. You'll see an editable set of corner marks at the four corners of your artwork.

Step 4

You can also create crop marks as a live effect. To do so, go to the Effect menu from the overhead toolbar and select Crop Marks.

Crop marks are the best way to guide the printer about where to trim the paper. I hope this article helped you to understand the notion of crop marks in Illustrator.