I use guidelines to define my bleed areas and where the printer should cut the final product.

Is there a way to preview or view what the output will be of what is inside the area bounded by the guidelines (excluding the bleed area)? Perhaps some function to pre-define a view/preview area?

Thanks,
John

I don't think you can. I think a bleeds setting is something Inkscape needs to adopt if it's going to be used for print work.

Having said that, what you can do is draw an invisible object to define the cutting area, select it and then export Selection to see what it will look like. That's probably not as quick and easy as you would like though.

Ah thanks for the tip. Actually for a rectangular preview, I don't even have to create the invisible object. As long I have the coordinates, then using the Export Bitmap - Custom option I can just enter in the corner points where my guidelines intersect.

Its still not my most ideal way to do it, so definitely it would be a nice Inkscape feature if it knew about bleed regions and integrate that into it's views/previewing functions. I think many people would like to be able to see what the final product will look like before sending out to the Printers. I imagine creating printed materials is one of the big uses of this tool. In my case, I'm trying to design business cards which are always cut from a larger sheet of paper after being printed.

Again thank you for the good advice.

John