How to Set Up a Cut Line File (Illustrator and Canva)

If you have ever ordered a custom shaped sticker and received a rectangle, the cut line is why. It is the one part of a sticker file that people reliably get wrong, partly because most design tutorials never mention it — it exists only in print production.

This guide explains what a cut line is, how to build one in Illustrator and what to do when you are working in Canva instead, plus the bleed and colour settings that go with it.

What a Cut Line Actually Is

A cut line — also called a dieline, cut path or cut contour — is a vector path that tells the cutting machine where to travel. It is an instruction, not artwork. It should never appear on the finished sticker.

That dual nature is what confuses people. Your file contains two different kinds of content: the design, which gets printed, and the cut path, which gets followed by a blade and then discarded. The printer's software has to be able to tell them apart, and the convention for that is colour.

The cut path is drawn as a spot colour — a named colour swatch rather than a regular CMYK mix. The most common conventions are a swatch literally named CutContour, or 100% magenta used exclusively for the path. When the RIP software sees that named swatch, it routes the path to the cutter instead of the print head.

Why a PNG Will Not Work

This is worth stating plainly because it accounts for most rejected files.

A PNG or JPEG is a grid of pixels. It can show a picture of an outline, but it cannot contain a path — there is nothing for a blade to follow. Transparency does not help either: a PNG with a transparent background still has no cut instruction in it. Some printers will trace the transparency automatically as a courtesy, but the result is approximate, and any noise or soft edge in your file produces a wobbly cut.

What you need is a real vector file: PDF (usually preferred), AI, or SVG. If your artwork itself is a raster image — a photo, or a painted illustration — that is fine. The artwork can be raster; the cut path must be vector. You place the image and then draw a path around it.

Setting Up a Cut Line in Illustrator

The full process, in order:

• Set the document to CMYK. File → Document Colour Mode → CMYK Colour. Do this first; converting later shifts colours.
• Create a new layer named CutContour. Keeping the path on its own layer makes it easy for the printer to isolate, and easy for you to hide while designing.
• Create the spot colour swatch. In the Swatches panel, make a new swatch, name it exactly CutContour, set Colour Type to Spot Colour, and give it 100% magenta (M=100, everything else 0) so it is visible against your artwork.
• Draw the path. Use the pen tool, or select your artwork and use Object → Path → Offset Path to generate an outline automatically.
• Style the path correctly. Stroke: the CutContour swatch, 0.25 pt or thinner. Fill: none. A filled cut path will cover your artwork and may print as a solid block.
• Set it to overprint. With the path selected, open the Attributes panel and tick Overprint Stroke. This prevents the path from knocking a white gap out of the artwork beneath it.
• Check it is a single closed path. Open shapes and duplicate stacked paths confuse the cutter. One sticker, one closed path.

That last point catches people out. If you draw an outline, then copy it for a second version and forget to delete the first, the file contains two identical paths and the machine may attempt both.

Creating a Contour Offset

Most custom shape stickers are not cut tight to the artwork. They have a small border — that familiar white outline — which is created by offsetting the cut path outward.

The border does real structural work. It bridges thin sections that would otherwise tear, it gives the sticker a cleaner silhouette, and it provides a margin of safety against cutting drift clipping your design.

To build one in Illustrator: select the artwork, then Object → Path → Offset Path, and enter an offset of 2 to 3 mm. Set joins to Round — mitre joins produce sharp spikes on tight corners. The result is a new path following your shape at a distance. Move it to the CutContour layer and apply the spot colour stroke.

If the offset produces a lumpy or overly complex outline, simplify it with Object → Path → Simplify, or draw the contour manually. A clean simple silhouette usually looks more professional than a path that faithfully traces every small bump.

For guidance on how much offset different artwork needs, see our die cut sticker guide.

Working in Canva

Canva is where a lot of sticker artwork starts, and it has a real limitation here: Canva cannot create spot colours or true cut paths. There is no way to mark a shape as "cut this, do not print it".

That does not mean Canva is unusable. It means you work around it:

Option one — order a standard shape. Circle, square, oval, rectangle and rounded rectangle do not need a custom path, because the printer already knows the outline. Design to the size, add your margin, and order the shape from the product options. For most logo and label work this is entirely sufficient. Our guide to standard sticker shapes covers the sizing conventions.

Option two — build the border into the design. Place your artwork on a shape with a visible white or coloured border, and ask the printer to cut around that border. You are drawing the silhouette as artwork rather than as a path. Make the border generous — 3 mm or more — so there is room for the cut to land inside it.

Option three — export and add the path elsewhere. Download as PDF Print, then open it in Illustrator, Inkscape (free) or Affinity Designer and add the cut layer there. This is the only route to a genuine custom contour from Canva-originated artwork.

When exporting from Canva, always choose PDF Print rather than PNG, and tick Crop marks and bleed if the option is available.

Adding Bleed Correctly

Bleed is artwork that extends past the cut line and gets discarded. It exists so that normal cutting drift eats waste material rather than exposing bare white liner along an edge.

The standard is 1/8 inch — 0.125 inch, about 3 mm — on every side. In Illustrator, set it when creating the document (File → New → Bleed), or afterwards via File → Document Setup. Then make sure your background actually reaches the bleed edge. Setting the value alone does nothing; the artwork has to extend into it.

The inverse margin matters too: keep text and critical detail at least 2 mm inside the cut line. The same tolerance that causes white slivers can clip artwork crowding the boundary.

So every sticker file has three concentric boundaries — bleed edge outermost, cut line in the middle, safe zone innermost. Our sizing and bleed guide covers the measurements in more detail.

Colour Mode and Resolution

CMYK, from the start. Screens emit light and use RGB; printers lay down ink and use CMYK. RGB can express colours that CMYK physically cannot, and the brightest offenders are exactly the ones people pick for stickers — electric blues, neon greens, vivid oranges. Converting at the end means watching those colours go flat with no chance to compensate. Designing in CMYK means what you approve is what you get.

300 dpi at final size. Not at screen size — at the actual printed dimensions. A 300 dpi image looks perfect on a monitor and prints badly if you have scaled it up 400% on the artboard. Check effective resolution, not source resolution.

Watch your blacks. Pure K-only black (0/0/0/100) prints as a slightly washed grey on vinyl. For solid black areas, use a rich black around C40 M30 Y30 K100. Keep small text K-only, though, or it registers fuzzy.

Exporting the File

Export as PDF unless your printer specifies otherwise, with these settings:

• Preset: PDF/X-4 or Press Quality.
• Marks and Bleeds: use document bleed settings; crop marks optional.
• Compression: do not downsample images below 300 dpi.
• Colour conversion: leave colour unchanged — you already built in CMYK.
• Spot colours: preserve them. If the export flattens CutContour into process colours, the cut instruction is lost.
• Fonts: embed all, or convert text to outlines before exporting.

That second-to-last point is the one that silently breaks files. Some export presets convert every spot colour to CMYK, which turns your cut path into a printed magenta line around the design. Always check spot colour preservation is on.

Checking Your File Before Sending

Open the exported PDF and verify:

• Can you select the cut path? Click it. If it is not selectable as a path, it did not survive export.
• Is the path still a spot colour? In Acrobat, Print Production → Output Preview lists the separations. CutContour should be there as its own plate.
• Does artwork reach the bleed edge? No white gaps between the design and the outer boundary.
• Is critical detail 2 mm inside the cut? Nothing touching the line.
• Is the document CMYK? Output Preview will show any stray RGB.
• Is it the right size? Check dimensions in document properties, and print at 100% on paper to confirm it feels right in the hand.

When the file is ready, you can set your shape, size and finish and upload it on our custom sticker page, or browse formats and materials on our custom stickers page.

Using Inkscape and Affinity Designer

Illustrator is the industry default, but it is not the only route — and for occasional sticker work, paying a subscription is hard to justify.

Inkscape is free and fully capable. It handles vector paths natively and exports PDF. Create a layer named CutContour, draw your path, and set the stroke to a distinctive colour. Spot colour support is the weak point: Inkscape does not manage spot colours the way Illustrator does, so the practical approach is to use pure magenta (RGB 255, 0, 255 or CMYK 0/100/0/0), keep the path on its clearly named layer, and tell your printer explicitly that the magenta path on that layer is the cut line. Most will handle it without complaint, but say so rather than assuming.

For the offset border, Inkscape's Path → Linked Offset or Path → Outset does the same job as Illustrator's Offset Path. Set the offset in the Preferences under Steps, since the default increment is small.

Affinity Designer is a one-off purchase and sits much closer to Illustrator in capability. It supports genuine spot colours: create a global colour in the Swatches panel, mark it as a spot colour, and it survives PDF export correctly. The Contour tool handles offsets. For anyone doing sticker work regularly without wanting a subscription, this is the strongest option.

Whatever tool you use, the requirements do not change. A real vector path, on an identifiable layer, in a colour that is clearly not part of the artwork, exported as PDF with vectors intact. Tools differ in how gracefully they do this; printers care only about the result.

One universal caution: always open your exported PDF in a different application before sending it. Export bugs are common, and a file that looks correct in the program that made it can still be missing paths when opened elsewhere.

Setting Up a Multi-Sticker Sheet File

A sheet file is more complex than a single sticker, because it contains many cut paths plus an outer trim, and the spacing between them is part of the specification rather than a design preference.

Build the sheet at final size. Set the artboard to the finished sheet dimensions, with bleed applied to the outer edge as normal.

Every sticker needs its own closed path. One path per sticker, all on the CutContour layer. Do not combine them into a single compound path — the cutter needs to treat each as a separate shape so they peel individually.

Respect the spacing rules. At least 0.25 inch between your outermost artwork and the sheet edge, and about 0.15 inch between individual stickers. These exist so trim drift cannot clip a design and so peeling one sticker does not lift its neighbour. Set up guides at these distances before you start placing artwork, rather than eyeballing it afterwards.

Watch for overlapping paths. Two cut paths that touch or cross will confuse the cutter and may produce a torn result. Zoom in and check every gap, particularly where you have nudged a design to fit.

Bleed works differently on a sheet. Individual stickers on a sheet do not each need their own bleed, because the kiss cut goes through the vinyl only and the surrounding material stays in place. What needs bleed is the outer sheet edge, where the full-depth trim happens. If you are printing a background colour across the whole sheet, extend that to the bleed edge.

Keep one material and one finish in mind. Everything on the sheet shares them, so do not design one sticker for holographic film and the rest for standard vinyl. Our comparison of sheets versus individual stickers covers the constraint and the economics behind it.

Finally, label the file clearly. When a printer receives a sheet with a dozen paths, a file named with the sheet size and your reference saves a round of emails.

Key Takeaways

• A cut line is a vector path drawn in a spot colour — commonly named CutContour or 100% magenta — that instructs the blade and never prints.
• PNG and JPEG files cannot carry a cut path; supply PDF, AI or SVG, with the path on its own layer, no fill, and overprint stroke enabled.
• Canva cannot create spot colours, so either order a standard shape, build a visible border into the artwork, or add the cut layer in Illustrator or Inkscape afterwards.
• Add 1/8 inch of bleed on every side and keep critical detail 2 mm inside the cut line.
• Work in CMYK at 300 dpi at final size, and confirm the export preserved the spot colour — many presets silently convert it to process colours.

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