A Digital Printing
Glossary
Accordion fold: Bindery term, two or more parallel folds which open like an accordion.
Against the grain: At right angles to direction of paper grain.
Alteration: Change in copy of specifications after production has begun.
Artboard: Alternate term for mechanical art.
Back up: Printing the second side of a sheet already printed on one side.
Bind: To fasten sheets or signatures with wire, thread, glue. or by other means.
Bindery: The finishing department of a print shop or firm specializing in finishing printed products.
Bleed: Printing that goes to the edge of the sheet after trimming.
Bond paper: Strong durable paper grade used for letterheads and business forms.
Butt: Joining images without overlapping.
Camera-ready copy: Print ready mechanical art.
Coated paper: A clay coated printing paper with a smooth finish.
Collate: A finishing term for gathering paper in a precise order.
Color correction: Methods of improving color separations.
Color separations: The process of preparing artwork, photographs, transparencies, or computer generated art for printing by separating into the four primary printing colors.
Continuous-tone copy: Illustrations, photographs or computer files that contain gradient tones from black to white or light to dark.
Contrast: The tonal change in color from light to dark.
Copy: All furnished material or disc used in the production of a printed product.
Cover paper: A heavy printing paper used to cover books, make presentation folders, etc.
Crop: To cut off parts of a picture or image.
Crop marks: Printed lines showing where to trim a printed sheet.
Crossover: Printing across the gutter or from one page to the facing page of a publication.
Cyan: One of four standard process colors. The blue color.
Density: The degree of color or darkness of an image or photograph.
Die: Metal rule or imaged block used to cut or place an image on paper in the finishing process.
Die cutting: Curing images in or out of paper.
Dot: An element of halftones. Using a loupe you will see that printed pictures are made many dots.
Dummy: A rough layout of a printed piece showing position and finished size.
Duotone: A halftone picture made up of two printed colors.
Gang: Getting the most out of a printing press by using the maximum sheet size to print multiple images or jobs on the same sheet. A way to save money.
Generation: Stages of reproduction from original copy. A first generation reproduction yields the best quality.
Gloss: A shiny look reflecting light.
Grain: The direction in which the paper fiber lie.
Hairline: A very thin line or gap about the width of a hair or 1/100 inch.
Halftone: Converting a continuous tone to dots for printing.
Hard copy: The output of a computer printer, or typed text sent for typesetting.
Highlight: The lightest areas in a picture or halftone.
Image area: Portion of paper on which ink can appear.
Imposition: Positioning printed pages so they will fold in the proper order.
Impression: Putting an image on paper.
Imprint: Adding copy to a previously printed page.
Keylines: Lines on mechanical art that show position of photographs or illustrations.
Laminate: To cover with film, to bond or glue one surface to another.
Laser printer: A laser printer uses a laser beam to write on a photoconductive revolving drum that is coated with toner, which is a fine, black powder. After the image is transferred to paper it passes through a pair of heated rollers or a fuser that melts the toner fusing it with the paper fibres.
Lines per inch: The number of rows of dots per inch in a halftone.
Loupe: A magnifying glass used to review a printed image, plate and position film.
Magenta: Process red, one of the basic colors in process color.
Matte finish: Dull paper or ink finish.
Mechanical: Camera ready art all contained on one board.
Middle tones: The tones in a photograph that are approximately half as dark as the shadow area.
Negative: The image on film that makes the white areas of originals black and black areas white.
Opacity: The amount of show-through on a printed sheet. The more opacity or the thicker the paper the less show-through. (The thicker/heavier the paper the higher the cost.)
Orientation: The direction that the page is printed; horizontal = landscape, vertical = portrait.
Output: In digital printing technology, to translate information from the computer to an external device (e.g., a printer or monitor); to print. Also, the visual display of digital information, or that which is printed or displayed.
Page count: Total number of pages in a book including blanks.
Perfect bind: A type of binding that glues the edge of sheets to a cover like a telephone book, Microsoft software manual, or Country Living Magazine.
Pica: Unit of measure in typesetting. One pica = 1/6 inch.
PMS: The abbreviated name of the Pantone Color Matching System.
Point: For paper, a unit of thickness equaling 1/1000 inch. for typesetting, a unit of height equaling 1/72 inch.
PostScript: The computer language most recognized by printing devices.
Printer driver: Printer-specific software that allows a computer to communicate with the printer. If available, provided by the printer manufacturer. (see also "RIP")
Process blue: The blue or cyan color in process printing.
Process colors: Cyan (blue), magenta (process red), yellow (process yellow), black (process black).
Ragged left: Type that is justified to the right margin and the line lengths vary on the left.
Ragged right: Type that is justified to the left margin and the line lengths vary on the right.
Ream: Five hundred sheets of paper.
Register: To position print in the proper position in relation to the edge of the sheet and to other printing on the same sheet.
Registration: A process used to align an image to a particular placement on a surface before printing or transferring to that surface.
Reverse: The opposite of what you see. Printing the background of an image. For example; type your name on a piece of paper. The reverse of this would be a black piece of paper with a white name.
Saddle stitch: Binding a booklet or magazine with staples in the seam where it folds.
Scanner: Device used to make color separations, halftones, duo tones and tri tones. Also a device used to scan art, pictures or drawings in desktop publishing.
Score: A crease put on paper to help it fold better.
Self-cover: Using the same paper as the text for the cover.
Shadow: The darkest areas of a photograph.
Show-through: Printing on one side of a sheet that can be seen on the other side of the sheet.
Side stitch: Binding by stapling along one side of a sheet.
Signature: A sheet of printed pages which when folded become a part of a book or publication.
Specifications: A precise description of a print order.
Spine: The binding edge of a book or publication.
Step-and-repeat: A procedure for placing the same image on plates in multiple places.
Stock: The material to be printed.
Text paper: Grades of uncoated paper with textured surfaces.
Transparency: A positive photographic slide on film allowing light to pass through.
Trim marks: Similar to crop or register marks. These marks show where to trim the printed sheet.
Trim size: The final size of one printed image after the last trim is made.
Up: Printing two or three up means printing multiple copies of the same image on the same sheet.
Upsampling: is when a low resolution image is saved to a higher resolution with no changes in dimensions. Upsampling adds more pixels/dots per inch (dpi), but creates blurry images, ugly blocks of color, and high contrast in images
Verso: The left hand page of an open book.
Vignette halftone: A halftone whose background gradually fades to white.
Watermark: A distinctive design created in paper at the time of manufacture that can be easily seen by holding the paper up to a light.
Wire-O binding: A method of wire binding books along the binding edge that will allow the book to lay flat using double loops. See Wire O.
With the grain: Folding or feeding paper into the press or folder parallel to the grain of the paper.
WYSIWYG: What You See Is What You Get. Refers to the ability to output data from computers exactly as it appears on the screen.
