Workspace (Canvas) and Honest Design Rules

The legacy artwork editor is closed. These rules help interpret a saved artwork document or prepare a replacement PDF in its source application. PDF Tools is an existing-PDF workflow; it does not expose the retired creation panels.

The 3-Layer Safety Armour (Artboard – Trim – Bleed)

Distinguish the finished trim boundary, artwork beyond that boundary and the safe area inside it. A stored bleed value or a drawn guide does not prove that real artwork extends far enough. PDF page-box evidence and the actual rendered content both matter.

Critical Warning: "Can I Place My Logo at the Edge?"

Keep important text, logos and barcodes inside the safe distance agreed for the product. Cutting and finishing can vary. A guide color, a percentage of customers or a fixed stack of 500 sheets is not a measured tolerance. Check the supplier's specification rather than relying on an illustrative blue line.

Background Colour: "Why Should I Extend to the Red Line?"

For edge-to-edge artwork, extend the background beyond the trim into the required bleed area in the source file. Merely enlarging the BleedBox does not create missing image content. Re-export and inspect corners and all edges; the amount depends on the product and finishing route.

The Logic of the Interface: Left Brain and Right Brain

Older material described a left creation panel and right object-property panel. Those are historical interface descriptions, not current navigation instructions. The retained document model stores page dimensions/units and objects with coordinates, size, rotation, opacity, colors and optional grouping or locking.

When reusing a saved document in a compatible authorized workflow:

1. Confirm the document unit (mm, pt or in), dimensions and orientation.
2. Inspect the object positions, text, image references and group contents.
3. Make content corrections in the owning source tool.
4. Inspect the exported PDF at final size, including bleed and safe area.

In PDF Studio, fit/zoom and finding navigation change the view; they do not move artwork objects or create source bleed.

What If My Browser Crashes?

There is no supported five-second cloud-autosave guarantee for the closed canvas. Keep the original source document and explicitly save/export your work in the tool you use. A selected local PDF and an uploaded/shared file have different storage boundaries; signing in does not prove a recoverable cloud copy exists.

Version History (Time Machine)

The current surface provides no legacy File → Version History restoration procedure. Preserve named source versions and record which PDF was checked or approved. A document version field is not a complete time-machine service.

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