There are a lot of terms that have been adopted by the printing industry. Hopefully the glossary below will help.
Pantone is a 14 colour set of base offset inks that are mixed to produce special formulations of colour (important note: this does NOT describe the final printed result after print as many people mistakenly assume)
- PDF (Portable Document Format)
Modified postscript file used by Adobe Acrobat as a secure document exchange format (can't be modified).
See Spectrophotometer
A single point of colour in a raster image.
Describes when you enlarge a raster file too far and the pixels become visible.
Another term for an adhesive backed product (will stick when pressure is applied)
An industry term (usually offset or screen) that refers to CMYK full colour printing
- Piezo-Electric Print head
This is one type of technology used to push ink out of a nozzle. It works by putting an electric charge to a quartz crystal. This crystal vibrates from the charge and pushes out a drop of ink. These print heads last longer than thermal print heads, although have a tendency to emit a smaller secondary droplet of ink that follows the intended drop. These are more expensive to produce but last much longer. Used by brands such as Mimaki, Roland, and Epson along with almost all solvent printers. They were traditionally developed by Seiko.
The part of a printer that contains the nozzles used to fire ink at the media to form a print.
A very basic interface written by the manufacturer of the printer it's connected to. Used inside the OS used to send files to a printer. In Windows the colour is native as RGB even though it's a printer with CMYK ink.
"Pantone Matching System" - see Pantone.
Occurs on media when too much ink is applied and the ink puddles on the media. Similar to Flooding
This occurs when a profile or printer is not accurately linearized or profiled, and subsequently what should be smooth gradations of colour bunch together. This results in a visible line that should not be there - commonly seen in areas such as skin or skies.
Postscript Printer Driver, in many rips this is a virtual printer driver displayed in the OS as a means of submitting unrecognised file types.
Is the description of resolution in a file. NOTE: Is not the same as DPI (Dots Per Inch)
A process for checking a file prior to production for errors etc.
See the "Profile Basics" page
Also "Contract Proofer". Is an Inkjet printer very carefully calibrated and profiled to match an offset press for the purpose of producing contract proofs. This equipment is often no different to what is commonly used in other digital print industries.
A file format in which pixels are placed in a grid.
Graphic format where images are described as a matrix of pixels (e.g. TIFF, JPEG, Scitex CT, & BMP)
Converting a file to a raster format.
Describes how to map out of gamut colour between the reference profile and the output profile. Also see Profile Basics
Number of dots available in a given area. In a file or on a monitor this is usually PPI (pixels per inch), on a printer this is usually DPI (dots per inch), and in offset and screen this is usually LPI (lines per inch).
Stands for Red, Green and Blue. Additive colours used in monitors, cameras, and scanners.
Stands for "Raster Image Processor". This is software used to control things like colour to printer directly (bypasses the OS and standard printer drivers). See the "Rip and Software" page.
"Return On Investment". Refers to how quickly the money put towards a purchase is returned by that investment.