Graphic Communications Services

Glossary of GCS Terms

Artwork A general term used to describe photographs, drawings, paintings, hand lettering, and the like prepared to illustrate printed matter.

Bleed An illustration or type is said to bleed when it prints off the edge of a trimmed page. Bleed illustrations are usually imposed so as to print beyond the trimmed page size. An illustration may bleed at the head, front, foot, an/or gutter (back) of a page. Bleeds should be set at 1/8".

Camera-Ready Art Material given to the printer that needs no further work before being passed on to the camera and plating department.

Crop Marks Marks along the margins of an illustration or project, used to indicate the portion of the project to be reproduced.

Duotones A common printing technique by which a halftone is printed in two ink colors - most often black and another color. Set Black at 45°. Set Lighter color at 75° screen angle.

Embossing A process performed after printing to stamp a raised or depressed image (artwork or typography) into the surface of a paper, using engraved metal embossing dies, extreme pressure, and heat. Embossing styles include blind, deboss, and foil-embossed.

Estimate A price provided to a customer, based on the specifications outlined on the estimate form; it is normally sent prior to entry of an order and prices may change if the order specifications are not the same as the estimate specifications.

Flush Even with; usually refers to typeset copy.

Font In composition, a complete assortment of type in one size and face.

Four-Color Process The four basic colors of ink CYMK (Cyan, yellow, magenta, and black) which reproduce full-color photographs or art.

Halftone Picture with gradient of tone formed by dots of varying sizes.

Justified Describes text copy that is typeset flush to both the left and the right margins.

Line Copy Any copy that is solid black with no gradients in tone and is suitable for reproduction without using a halftone screen.

Offset A method in which the plate or cylinder transfers an ink image to an offset or transfer roller, which then transfers the image to stock.

PDF Short for Portable Document Format, a file format developed by Adobe Slystems. PDF captures formatting information from a variety of desktop publishing applications, making it possible to send formatted documents and have them appear on the recipient's monitor or printer as they were intended. To view a file in PDF format, you need Adobe Reader, a free application distributed by Adobe Systems.

Tab Alignment An electronic function for alignment for text on tab stops; alignment can be left, right centered or decimal.

Template A dummy publication that acts as a model for the structure and general layout of another publication.

Text File A file containing only letters, digits and symbols. A text file usually consists of characters coded from the ASCII character set.

Thumbnail A miniature copy of a page.

Tiff Tag Image File Format. A document format developed by Aldus, Microsoft and leading scanner vendors as a standard for bitmapped graphics, including scanned images.

Tints Various even tones (strengths) of a solid color. Created by the use of photomechanical tints usually available in percentages of 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 and 95% screen tints from various manufacturers. Sometime referred to as Bendays.

Type Style A variation, such as bold or italic of a font. A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M|N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

Tone Reproduction The contrast of an original must adjust during color reproduction to conform to the ranges of the halftone screens from 1% to 100%. It is virtually impossible to print densities more than 100% and tones less than 2 or 3 % will have no detail. This is one of the most difficult limitations of the printing process to understand or accept.

Toner A dry ink powder which has been electrically charged. Used in printers, fax machines and copiers. Generally, the image is translated into bit mapped charges of the opposite polarity on a special drum in the printer. The toner is attracted to the charged areas, where it is transferred to paper. The toner is then "set", usually by heat.

Track Kerning A method of uniformly increasing or decreasing the amount of letter and word spacing over a range of text, depending upon the specific font and size.

Tracking Adjusting the letterspacing uniformly throughout a selected portion of text. See kerning.

Trapping The ability to print wet ink film over previously printed ink. Wet trapping is depending upon several press and paper conditions including hardness and holdout of the paper, tack of the inks, and general condition of the rollers, cylinders and blankets on the press. Dry trapping is printing wet ink over dry ink.

Trichromatic The technical name for RGB representation of color, i.e., using red, green and blue to create all the colors in the spectrum. Does not replace CMYK.

Trim Marks Guides that show where a document will be cut to fit the specifications of a final printed product. Tritone An image reproduced using three colors.