Glossary

Glossary of terms:

There are a lot of terms that have been adopted by the printing industry. Hopefully the glossary below will help.

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      • Saturation

      A way to describe the strength or vividness of a hue.

      • Screen Angle

      The angle of a halftone screening as measured from the horizontal axis. Black and white are normally at 45°. When process printing black is usually at 45° , cyan at 105°, Magenta at 75°, Yellow at 90°

      • Skeleton Black Generation

      Black in replaces calculated amounts of cyan, magenta and yellow ink. Using black also gives better gray neutrality. See also GCR

      • Spectrophotometer / Spectro

    Spectro (spectral - meaning colour) -photo (to capture) -meter (measurement). A device used to measure colour (usually in cielab) to select colour, calibrate or profile a device. Used in many industries such as the print industry, paint colour selection, wine creation, along with many other scientific uses.

    • Spot colour

    A specific colour such as Pantone, or a metallic etc.

    • Swellable media or paper

    This is a type of coating process for inkjet media. When the inkjet ink hits the coated area of the media, the coating swells up and later forms a hard barrier protecting the print. The advantage to this media is that it protects the ink very well against pollutants, although the disadvantage is a much slower drying time compared to Microporous media types.

    • Thermal Print Head

    These print heads use a small element in the nozzle that heats a small air bubble. As this bubble heats up it expands and pushes out a drop of ink (hence why Canon refer to it as "Bubble-Jet"). These print heads are cheaper to produce allowing easy and economical replacement although they do not last as long. Manufacturers such as HP, Kodak/Encad, Canon use this technology.

    • TIFF (Tagged Image File Format)

    A standard raster format for graphic files

    • UCR (Under Colour Removal)

    Changes the use of CMYK where they print together wo black ink to produce a neutral gray. See also GCR

    • Vector Format

    A graphic file format that uses mathematical relationships to create the image. Great for great enlargement ability with small files.




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        D-F        G-I       J-L        M-O        P-R        S-V        W-Z

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Last modified: 21st July 2008 at 12:09 GMT+10