Full-Bleed Photo Covers: When the 0.125-Inch Bleed Rule Costs You Important Detail
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A full-bleed photo cover looks stunning on screen — edge-to-edge imagery with no white border, exactly what KDP's paperback cover guidelines call for. Then the proof copy arrives and a face is missing part of a chin, a logo is sliced in half, or a line of text sits awkwardly close to the spine fold. The file passed KDP's automated checks. It still looks wrong in your hands. This is almost never a software bug — it's a design decision made without accounting for what the 0.125-inch bleed requirement actually does to your image.