A

Glossary of Terms
Adobe Acrobat Suite of applications to create and view PDF files. Aliasing The term is commonly applied to spatial aliasing, which manifests as visible pixelation - a blocky or jagged effect - especially with near horizontal or near vertical lines of high contrast. Anti-alias The blending of pixel colors on the perimeter of hard-edged shapes, like type, to smooth undesirable edges (jaggies). Alpha channel A special 8-bit grayscale channel that is used for saving a selection. Anchor Point An anchor point is the part of a path that "ties the path down to the page." A line will have at least two anchor points on either end. It will have additional anchor points at every kink and corner. A curve will have an anchor point on either side of it and may optionally have additional anchor points somewhere on the curve itself. Anchor points do not print out but they shape the paths that appear on the hardcopy. Auto Trace (streamlining) A function in illustration software that creates paths along the edges of a scanned sketch. A common way to begin a drawing is to create a pencil or ink drawing and scan that. This scan will be used as a template over which the auto tracing occurs. The next step is typically to clean up the paths the auto trace function created and then discard the template scan file. There is significant concern when using auto trace functions that the shapes will be overly complex (too many anchor points) and will not output. This is a leading cause of output failure.

B
Banner The title of a periodical, which appears on the cover of the magazine and on the first page of the newsletter. It contains the name of the publication and serial information, date, volume, number . Bevel Adding a beveled effect to a graphic image gives the image a raised appearance by applying highlight colors and shadow colors to the inside and outside edges. Bit-mapped (mode) The Paint graphics mode describes an image made of pixels where the pixel is either on (black) or off (white). Bitmap Font This is the correct name for what many people call a screen font. It is the part of a PostScript Type 1 font that is installed on the computer hard disk so that the font name appears on the menus in the software. Bezier The term used to describe the way in which illustration software uses anchor points and control handles to create shapes. Bezier illustration and Bezier curves are at the foundation of the PostScript language and are even found within PostScript type 1 outline fonts. Blend A function in illustration software that allows the creation of intermediate shapes from two masters. These beginning and ending shapes can vary in both shape and color. The user inputs the desired number of steps and the software creates the new, intermediate shapes. This function is used primarily to create realistic highlights in artwork. There is a concern over the poor results that occur if there are too many or too few steps requested by the user. Bounding Box A function in the PostScript language that describes a rectangular shape just large enough to contain all elements of a design or illustration. A bounding box does not print but is always present to communicate information about the shape and size of the design or illustration. Bleed Printing at the very edge of the paper. Many laser printers, including all LaserJets up to the 11x17" 4V, cannot print to the very edge, leaving a border of approximately 1/4". In commercial printing, bleeding is generally more expensive, because wider paper is often used, which is later cut to size. Bleeds not available on standard stationary. Available on DYO labels - except for square cut. Benday A method of adding a tone to a printed image by imposing a transparent sheet of dots or other patterns on the image at some stage of a photographic reproduction process.

Glossary of Terms
C
Camera-ready copy Final publication material that is ready to be made into a negative for a printing plate. May be a computer file or actual print and images on a board. Cap height In typography, the distance from the baseline to the top of the capital letters. Character Any letter, figure, punctuation, symbol or space Clip art Ready-made artwork sold or distributed for clipping and pasting into publications. Available in hard-copy books, and in electronic form, as files on disk. Color separation The process of creating separate negatives and plates for each color of ink (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) that will be used in the publication. Condensed font A font in which the set-widths of the characters is narrower than in the standard typeface. (Note: not the inter-character space -- that is accomplished through tracking). Continuous tone Artwork that contains gradations of gray, as opposed to black-and-white line art. Photographs and some drawings, like charcoal or watercolor, require treatment as continuous-tone art. Crop marks Horizontal and vertical lines that indicate the edge of the printed piece. Cropping Cutting out the extraneous parts of an image, usually a photograph. Contrast The difference in brightness between the lightest and darkest parts of a photographic subjects, negative, prints or slide. Contrast is affected by the subject brightness, lighting, film type degree of development, the grade and surface of the printing paper, and the type of enlarger head used.

D
Dots per inch (dpi) Measure of output device resolution and quality. For example, the number of pixels per inch on a display device. Measures the number of dots horizontally and vertically. Descender In typography, the part of the letterform that dips below the baseline; usually refers to lowercase letters and some punctuation, but some typefaces have uppercase letters with descenders. Dingbat typeface A typeface made up of nonalphabetic marker characters, such as arrows, asterisks, encircled numbers. Drop shadow Drop shadows are those shadows dropping below text or images which gives the illusion of shadows from lighting and gives a 3D effect to the object. Duotone A halftone image printed with two colors, one dark and the other light. The same photograph is halftoned twice, using the same screen at two different angles; combining the two improves the detail and contrast. Dot The smallest raster element of an image. Many dots together produce one pixel. Meaning, for example, that in the specification "8 bit depth", three "layers" of 256 dots each are on top of one another to produce one pixel. Dot gain A printing defect in which dots prints larger than intended, causing darker colours or tones. Download The process of receiving data from another digital source. Driver A software utility designed to tell a computer how to operate a external device. For instance, to operate a printer or a scanner, a computer will need a specific driver.

Glossary of Terms
Emboss Embossing a graphic image adds dimension to it by making the image appear as if it were carved as a projection from a flat background. EPS Encapsulated PostScript. A file format commonly used for photographic and drawn graphics. An EPS file is created and later placed onto a page layout in a page assembly program. Export A term used in some illustration programs that allows the drawing to be saved to the hard disk in a commonly readable format (usually EPS.) This allows the drawings to be placed into a page layout.

F
Flatbed Scanners Scanners that contain an autofeeder and a piece of glass where the paper can be placed and scanned. Can be useful for certain non-standard papers, but is slow and not good for production scanning (see transport). Font A set of characters in a specific typeface, at a specific point size, and in a specific style. "12-point Times Bold" is a font -- the typeface Times, at 12-point size, in the bold style. Hence "12-point Times Italic" and "10-point Times Bold" are separate fonts. Filter A function for special effects. It is possible to apply a filter to artwork to achieve many different looks that would be difficult with manual drawing techniques. There is a concern over excessive use of filters creating artwork that is too complex to output. Film Material that is loaded into an imagesetter. Film is coated with a light sensitive emulsion and exposed with laser light inside the output device. After chemical development the film holds a very sharp image of the layout created by the designer. This film is used to prepare printing plates for a press run. Four Colour Process (CMYK) In commercial printing, used for reproduction of color photographs. The various hues are created by superimposition of halftone dots of the process colors: cyan (a greenish blue), magenta (a purplish red), yellow, and black.

G
GIF (Graphic Interchange format) GIF images display up to 256 colors. GIF images generally have very small file sizes and are the most widely used graphic format on the web. The low quality resulting from compression makes them unsuitable for professional printing. Gradient Screen A function in graphic software that allows the user to fill an object/image with a smooth transition of colors, for example a dark blue, gradually becoming lighter or red, gradually becoming orange, then yellow. Graphic design Visual representation of an idea or concept. The term is used as a collective name for all activities relating to visual design, including web design, logo design etc. Gray-scale image A "deep" bitmap that records with each dot its gray-scale level. The impression of greenness is a function of the size of the dot; a group of large dots looks dark and a group of small dots looks light. Grippers A row of clips holding the sheet of paper in place as it speeds through the printing press Gripper edge The leading edge of paper that moves through a printing press or folding machine. An allowance in the paper must be made for the gripper edge, this can vary do to press specifications

H
Halftone In traditional publishing, a continuous-tone image photographed through a screen in order to create small dots of varying sizes that can be reproduced on a printing press. Digital halftones are produced by sampling a continuous-tone image and assigning different numbers of dots, which simulate different sized dots, for the same effect.

Glossary of Terms
Hcontinue
Halftone screen In traditional publishing, the screen through which a continuous-tone image is photographed, measured in lines per inch. Although digital halftones are not actually photographed through a screen, the term is still used to describe the size of the dots; the larger the dots (fewer lines per inch), the more grainy the image. Special screens can be used for special effects.

I
Image area The area on a page within which copy is positioned; determined by the margins. Italic Any slanted or leaning letter designed to complement or be compatible with a companion roman typeface. Imagesetter A device that uses laser light to expose film at high dpi resolution, usually 1200 dpi or higher. Most imagesetters have a maximum dpi of 4000. When generating screens or dots for halftones, each dot is created from the smaller dots that are determined by the dpi resolution. Imagesetters come in many different sizes and formats. Imposition The laying out of type pages in a press form so that they will be in the correct order after the printed sheet is folded. Imposition planning can help reduce paper waste and make-ready time. The most common imposition approaches are sheetwise, work-and-back, work-and-tumble, and work-and-turn.

J
JPEG (Joint Photographic Electronic Group) A common compression method that shrinks a file's storage size by discarding non-important picture detail. Excessive jpeg compression can cause poor image quality.

K
Kern To squeeze together characters, for a better fit of strokes and white space. In display type, characters almost need to be kerned because the white space between characters at large sizes is more noticeable. Knockout In printing, when one color is to be printed immediately adjacent to another color; actually they are printed with a slight overlap. Also known as reverse printing.

L
Landscape (orientation) A page or layout that is wider than it is tall. Leading (pronounced "led-ding") The space between lines of type, traditionally measured baseline-to-baseline, in points. Text type is generally set with one or two points of leading; for example, 10-point type with 2 points of leading. This is described as 10/12, read ten on twelve. Line art Black-and-white artwork with no gray areas. Pen-and-ink drawings are line art, and most graphic images produced with desktop publishing graphics programs can be treated as line art. For printing purposes, positive halftones can be handled as line art. Logotype A symbol, mark, or identifying name. Low-resolution image A low-resolution image is a low-detail scan made from, for example a photograph. Layers A function within illustration software that allows the user to organize their drawing. As an example it would be likely to see a drawing with layer names such as: Background, tablecloth, plate, pasta, sauce, type. Layers do not affect any color separation capabilities; they are simply an organizational aid. It is recommended to always use layers. Line Weight A term referring to the thickness of a printing line. Expressed in points line weight is adjustable over a wide range and a line can be colored at will. It is not uncommon to draw shapes with a line weight of zero and use only the fill color to define the shape.

Glossary of Terms
Lcontinue
Laser Printer (Some, but not all Laser Printers have PostScript capabilities.) A hardware device found in most offices that uses laser technology to form an image that is transferred to paper. It is toner particles (like a copier) that actually mark the page. Laser printers have an attribute of Resolution that is expressed as DPI (dots per inch.) 600 DPI lasers are most common but there are specialized lasers with greater resolution. Lines per inch (LPI) A measurement of printing resolution in systems that use a halftone screen. Specifically, it is a measure of how close together the lines in a halftone grid are. Higher LPI indicates greater detail and sharpness.

M
Moir patterns: (pronounced "mo-ray") Irregular plaid-like patterns that occur when a bit-mapped image is reduced, enlarged, displayed, or printed at a resolution different from the resolution of the original. Megabyte A unit of measurement in computer storage equal to 1000 kilobytes. A "meg" is a very common unit of measurement and the term is spoken in terms of whole and fractional units: "That scan for the cover was five and a half megs." Megahertz Abbreviated Mhz. A term expressing the "clock speed" of a computer. The clock speed is like the pulse rate of a computer. Unlike our own pulse, it is desirable to have a computer with a high clock speed because it will execute a greater number of instructions in a given amount of time. Often part of a computers name like the Apple Power Macintosh 8100/80; which has a 80 Mhz clock speed. Masking An act of using a mask in an image editing program. Mirror Image An image that has its parts arranged with a reversal of right and left, as it would appear if seen in a mirror.

N
Negative space In design, the space where the figure isn't -- in artwork, usually the background; in a publication, the parts of the page not occupied by type or graphics.

O
OCR Optical Character Recognition. A method of using pattern recognition of images of characters to create computer readable data. different OCR software works better than others on certain types of data. Offset printing For high-volume reproduction -- utilizes three rotating drums: a plate cylinder, a blanket cylinder, and an impression cylinder. The printing plate is wrapped around the plate cylinder, inked and dampened. The plate image is transferred, or offset, onto the blanket cylinder. Paper passes between the blanket cylinder and the impression cylinder, and the image is transferred onto the paper. Outline The outline is the outer edge of text or a graphic. Outline Font This is the correct name for what many people call a printer font. An outline font is the part of a PostScript Type 1 font that is installed on the computer hard disk and that gets downloaded to the output device when printing. It contains the PostScript instructions necessary to correctly describe the font shape. Overprint Printing over an area that has already been printed.

P
Pantone matching system The Pantone matching system is used for specifying and blending match colors. It provides designers with swatches of over 700 colors and gives printers the recipes for making those colors.

Glossary of Terms
Pcontinue
PNGPortable Network Graphics format PNG (usually pronounced "ping"), is used for lossless compression. The PNG format displays images without jagged edges while keeping file sizes relatively small, making them popular on the web. PNG files are however generally larger than GIF files Point A measurement used in typography for type size, leading, and other space specifications in a page layout. There are 12 points in a pica, and approximately 70 points to an inch. Printer font High-resolution bitmaps or font outline masters used for the actual laying down of the characters on the printed page, as opposed to display on the screen. Process color separation (CMYK) In commercial printing, used for reproduction of color photographs. The various hues are created by superimposition of halftone dots of the process colors: cyan (a greenish blue), magenta (a purplish red), yellow, and black. Path A term for the shape of an element in an illustration. A path, on its own will not show on the hardcopy until it has a line weight and color attribute (or fill) assigned to it. Pen Tool The primary drawing tool in PostScript illustration software. The pen tool allows the user to position anchor points and control the shape of the line by controlling the control handles that extend from the anchor points. Color Correction The act of correcting for and eliminating an unwanted color cast. Color correction is performed on an entire image (called global color correction) or on just one part (called local color correction.) PDF Stands for Portable Document Format. Created by Adobe Systems in its software program Adobe Acrobat as a universal browser. Files can be downloaded via the web and viewed page by page, provided the user is computer has installed the necessary plug-in which can be downloaded from Adobe's own web site. Pixel (picture element) The smallest unit that a device can address. Most often refers to display monitors, a pixel being the smallest spot of phosphor that can be lit up on the screen. Pantograph A screened image in the background of the printing product. Pica A measurement used in typography for column widths and other space specifications in a page layout. There are 12 points in a pica, and approximately 6 picas to an inch.

R
Resolution The crispness of detail or fineness of grain in an image. Screen resolution is measured in dots by lines (for example, 640 x 350); printer resolution is measured in dpi (for example, 300 dpi). Reverse White or light-colored type of images on a dark background. RGB (Red, Green, Blue) RGB is the model used to project color on a computer monitor. By mixing these three colors, a large percentage of the visible color spectrum can be represented. Run-around Type that is set to fit the contour of an illustration, photo, ornament or initial. RAM Random Access Memory. RAM is a resource in computer and is the actual area where calculations and information is stored. It is common today to see 8 MB to 24 MB of RAM in design workstations and 60 MB to 256 MB of RAM in image editing workstations. Having more RAM in a computer makes it faster and more capable. RAM is expensive. RIP Raster Image Processor. A RIP is a part of a PostScript laser printer and part of a PostScript imagesetter. It is a special computer that converts PostScript page descriptions into a rasterized image that can be edited or output directly. (A page layout must be ripped before it can be output.)

Glossary of Terms
Rcontinue
Royalty-Free Photos or Images Photos, graphic images, or other intellectual property that are sold for a single standard fee and may be used repeatedly by the purchaser. Typically with royalty-free clauses, the company that sells you the images still owns all of the rights to the images, and they are allowed for use only by the purchaser (i.e., the same images cannot be used by another company or individual without repurchase). Raster graphics image, digital image, or bitmap A data file or structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, on a computer monitor, paper, or other display device. The color of each pixel is individually defined; images in the RGB color space, for instance, often consist of colored pixels defined by three bytesone byte each for red, green and blue. Less colorful images require less information per pixel; an image with only black and white pixels requires only a single bit for each pixel. Raster graphics are distinguished from vector graphics in that vector graphics represent an image through the use of geometric objects such as curves and polygons.

S
Skew The angling of the paper which can cause failure of OCR. some scanners will angle small paper badly. Substitutions Traditionally the most expensive errors to correct. Consists of those characters that a recognition engine is convinced it got right but that are in fact wrong. High levels of 'accuracy' reported by an OCR engine can mean that there are many substitutions. The alternative is to set tolerances very high -- then the engine will often report low accuracy -- but there may be many correctly interpreted characters which are labelled wrong. Software A term that describes the page layout, illustration and image editing tools that are used in desktop publishing. The term software is synonymous with the terms "program" and "application." The slang term "code" also refers to software. Sans serif typeface A typeface that has no serifs, such as Helvetica or Swiss. The stroke weight is usually uniform and the stress oblique, though there are exceptions. Scaling Reduction or enlargement of artwork, which can be proportional (most frequently) or disproportional. In desktop publishing, optimal scaling of bitmaps is reduction or enlargement that will avoid or reduce moir patterns. Screen font Low-resolution (that is, screen resolution) bitmaps of type characters that show the positioning and size of characters on the screen. As opposed to the printer font, which may be high-resolution bitmaps or font outline masters. Screen (tint) In graphic arts, a uniform dotted fill pattern, described in percentage (for example, 50 percent screen). Script Connected, flowing letters resembling hand writing with pen or quill. Either slanted or upright. Sometimes with a left-hand slant. Serif In a typeface, a counterstroke on letterforms, projecting from the ends of the main strokes. For example, Times or Dutch is a serifed typeface. Some typefaces have no serifs; these typefaces are called sans serif. Stroke weight In a typeface, the amount of contrast between thick and thin strokes. Different typefaces have distinguishing stroke-weight characteristics. Scale To change the proportion of an image by increasing or decreasing its size.

Glossary of Terms
Scontinue
Scoring The process of pressing a groove into the paper to allow it to fold more easily and keep the sheet from cracking when folded. The score should run parallel to the paper grain keep the sheet from cracking when folded. The score should run parallel to the paper grain Screen In offset lithography, a screen is a glass or film with cross-ruled opaque lines or vignetted dots used to reproduce continuous tone artwork such as photographs. To create a halftone, an image is shot through the mesh screen to break it into tiny dots. The closer the line screen, the smaller the dots and the more dots per inch and, hence, the finer and crisper the printed image. Less absorbent papers reduce the spread of ink dots and, therefore, a finer line screen can be used.

T
Tumble Printed Refers to those double sided papers that get turned over from top to bottom. Requires duplex scanner to rotate 180 degrees. Template In page design, a file with an associated style sheet and all standing and serial elements in place on a master or base page, used for publication following the same design. TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) For digital gray-scale halftones, a device-independent graphics file format. TIFF files can be used on IBM/compatible or Macintosh computers, and may be output to PostScript printers. Track In typography, to reduce space uniformly between all characters in a line. As opposed to kerning, which is the variable reduction of space between specific characters. Type alignment The distribution of white space in a line of type where the characters at their normal set width do not fill the entire line length exactly. Type maybe aligned left, right, centered, or right-justified. Typeface The set of characters created by a type designer, including uppercase and lowercase alphabetical characters, numbers, punctuation, and special characters. A single typeface contains many fonts, at different sizes and styles. Type families A group of typefaces of the same basic design but with different weights and proportions. Tones Refers to the strength of grays between white and black. It relates to the brightness, lightness and darkness of the subject and is determined by illumination. Trapping Digital files is the process of compensating for misregistration on the printing press by printing small areas of overlapping color where objects meet

U, V, W
Unit In typography, divisions of the em space, used for fine-tuning the letterspacing of text type. Different typesetting systems and desktop publishing software use different unit divisions: 8, 16, 32, and 64 are common. One unit is a thin space or a hair space. Vector graphic Vector graphics are drawn in paths. This allows the designer to resize images freely without getting pixilated edges as is the case with bitmapped images. The vector format is generally used for in printing while the bitmap format is used for onscreen display. Weight Denotes the thickness of a letter stroke, light, extra-light, "regular," medium, demi-bold, bold, extra bold and ultra bold.