The three vendors do not agree. Gelato asks for 4 mm. Prodigi says photo prints typically carry 3 mm. Printful states its standard as 0.125 inch, then prints “3 mm” next to it in the same sentence, which is 0.175 mm short of what 0.125 inch actually is.
None of this is dramatic on its own. It becomes a problem the moment you reuse one export across two platforms, which is what most sellers do.
The three figures, as published
All three pages were opened and read on 10 September 2026. Gelato’s carries a date. The other two do not, so treat them as what the vendors were saying on that day.
| Vendor | What the page says | Per edge, in mm |
|---|---|---|
| Gelato | ”We require a 4 mm bleed area to be provided on all sides.” | 4 mm |
| Printful | ”Standard: 0.125″ (3 mm) on each edge (+0.25″ total to both dimensions).“ | 3.175 mm |
| Prodigi | ”Photo prints typically have 3mm of bleed.” | 3 mm |
Sources, in the same order: Gelato’s design requirements for PDF uploads, page dated 30 October 2025; Printful’s full-bleed glossary entry; Prodigi’s images FAQ.
Printful’s own conversion is 0.175 mm out
This is small, and it is worth naming precisely, because it is the kind of number that gets copied.
One inch is exactly 2.54 cm. So 0.125 inch is 0.3175 cm, which is 3.175 mm. Printful’s page writes it as “0.125″ (3 mm)”. The label rounds down.
The rest of that same sentence is internally consistent, which tells you the inch figure is the real one: Printful adds ”(+0.25″ total to both dimensions)”, and 0.25 inch is 6.35 mm, exactly two edges of 3.175 mm. The vendor’s arithmetic is right. Only the millimetre label in the brackets is loose.
If you work in centimetres and you set your bleed to what the bracket says, you are 0.175 mm short per edge against what the same page asks for in inches. That is not going to ruin a print. It is worth knowing anyway, because it is the second time this parenthetical rounding has turned up on a print-on-demand size page, and the pattern is more useful than the individual number.
What this does to one real file
Take a 30 × 40 cm print, one of the most common wall-art sizes there is. The bleed sits outside the finished size, so the file you upload is larger than the print you get.
The arithmetic below is ours, not any vendor’s. Each vendor publishes the per-edge figure and leaves the addition to you.
| Vendor | Bleed per edge | File you upload | Added to each dimension |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gelato | 4 mm | 30.8 × 40.8 cm | 8 mm |
| Printful | 3.175 mm | 30.635 × 40.635 cm | 6.35 mm |
| Prodigi | 3 mm | 30.6 × 40.6 cm | 6 mm |
Three vendors, one design, three different export sizes. The spread between the largest and the smallest is 2 mm across the width, which is 1 mm per edge.
That millimetre is the whole practical issue. A file built to the common 3 mm industry habit and uploaded to Gelato is 1 mm short of what Gelato asks for on every edge.
Does the missing millimetre actually matter
Honestly: probably less than the arithmetic suggests, and we are not going to overstate it.
Bleed exists because trimming is not perfectly accurate. The extra border is there to be cut off, so that if the blade wanders by half a millimetre you get colour to the edge rather than a thin white line. A file with 3 mm of bleed still has 3 mm of tolerance, which is a lot of tolerance.
What we can say from the pages themselves is narrower than “your print will be ruined”, and that is the honest version. None of the three vendors states anywhere that it rejects a file for having slightly less bleed than requested. Gelato says it requires 4 mm; it does not say what happens at 3. We have not tested it, so we are not going to tell you.
What is clearly true is this: 4 mm satisfies all three published figures and 3 mm satisfies two of them. Building to the largest number costs you nothing, since the bleed is discarded either way.
Prodigi does it for you, which is its own trap
Prodigi’s FAQ adds a sentence the other two do not:
However, our print API will automatically prepare your images with the correct amount of bleed if you aren’t setting up your files independently.
That is genuinely convenient, and it is also the reason a Prodigi-first seller can be caught out later. If Prodigi has been silently handling bleed for you, you have never actually built a full-bleed file, and the first time you upload that same artwork to a vendor that expects you to do it yourself, the edges are wrong.
The tell is easy to check. Open your master file and look at whether the artwork extends past the trim size or stops exactly at it. If it stops exactly at the finished dimensions, something downstream has been adding your bleed.
Gelato’s second number, which is not bleed
While you are in Gelato’s requirements page, there is a companion figure that gets confused with bleed constantly:
The safe area should start at least 4 mm (12 mm only on the binding side for Wire-O bound products) from the trim line to ensure that text and graphics are not cut off
Same number, opposite direction. Bleed is 4 mm outside the trim line. The safe area starts 4 mm inside it. Together they define an 8 mm band around the edge of your 30 × 40 cm design where nothing important should sit: 4 mm that will definitely be cut, and 4 mm that might be.
A signature, a border rule, a caption, the last letter of a long title. Those belong inside the safe area, not near it.
The setting to use, once
If you want one export that works everywhere:
Bleed: 4 mm on all four edges. Satisfies Gelato outright, exceeds Printful and Prodigi harmlessly.
Safe area: keep everything that matters at least 4 mm inside the trim line. Gelato’s own figure, and the most conservative of the three.
Canva users, change the default. Printful’s page notes that Canva “defaults to 3 mm”. That is the number you would inherit without noticing, and it is 1 mm short for Gelato.
Export at the trim size plus 8 mm in each dimension. For a 30 × 40 cm print that is a 30.8 × 40.8 cm file. Do the addition once per size and keep a note of it.
Before you upload
Check which vendor is preparing your bleed. If it is the platform, you do not have a portable file yet.
Set the bleed to the largest figure any of your vendors asks for, not the smallest, and not the one your design tool defaults to.
Convert the inch figures yourself rather than trusting a millimetre label in brackets. 0.125 inch is 3.175 mm and 0.25 inch is 6.35 mm, every time.
Keep the outer 8 mm of every edge free of anything you would miss. Four of those millimetres are guaranteed to go.
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