Design Terms

Aliasing
The “staircase” or jagged effect that occurs when display resolution is too coarse to minimize the broken appearance of certain electronic design elements. Sometimes people would describe this effect as “pixelated”. Aliasing is more visually pronounced in diagonal lines, curves, and circles. To avoid aliasing, you should save your files with “Anti-Alias” to keep the text smooth when printed.

Anti-Aliasing
Also called oversampling, a software technique for addressing aliasing issue. Anti-aliasing reduces the prominence of jaggies by surrounding the stairsteps with intermediate shades of gray (for gray-scaling devise) or color (for color devices). Please note that although anti-aliasing may reduce the jagged appearance of the lines, it also may make the lines appear fuzzier.

Artwork
All original copy, including type, photos and illustrations, intended for printing.

Bitmap
A computer file in which each pixel contains one bit of image information.

Bitmapped Images
Technically called raster images, these images use a grid of colors known as pixels to represent images. Each pixel is assigned a specific location and color value.

Bleed
When an image extends beyond the trim edge of the printed sheet. It is important to include bleeds in your artwork files if you want the image to extend to the edge of the paper for your final printed piece. We encourage you to create a design with a full-bleed – i.e., extend the image off all four sides of your design – to ensure the best quality for your printed piece. This ensures you don’t lose anything important when your project is cut down to size.

Border
Refers to the area between the edge of the image and the edge of the paper.

CMYK (Cyan Magenta Yellow blacK)
The color space used for commercial printing and most color computer printers. In theory, cyan, magenta and yellow (CMY) can print all colors, but inks are not pure and black comes out muddy. The black ink (K) is required for quality printing.
Example Picture

Color Balance
The process of maintaining the proper ratio of cyan, magenta, and yellow ink to produce a picture with the desired color and without an unwanted color cast or color bias.

Color Calibration
A means or method of setting a computer monitor, scanner, or color printer to a standard set of color values so as to ensure that all colors remain consistent throughout each step of the imaging process.

Color Correction
Refers to adjusting an image to improve overall output color.

Contrast
The degree of tones in an image ranging from highlight (light tones) to shadow (dark tones).

Copy
Refers to the words that are used along with images to create a design that conveys a message.

Crop
Refers to the process of positioning an image to ensure that unwanted portions of the image are removed during the printing process. Cropping is also a way to properly proportion your final artwork before approving your print job.

Crop Marks
Small symbols placed in the margin outside of the image area that indicate the area to be printed and/or trimmed from the image.

Encapsulated Postscript File (.EPS)
An Adobe Systems-developed file format. It is a device-independent PostScript representation of a graphic or other object. It stores files as vectors and includes a low-resolution bitmap representation for quick on-screen viewing.

File Extensions
Three-digit designations at end of a file name that indicate what format the file has been saved in. Common artwork file formats include: .eps, .jpeg, .pdf, .ps, .psd, .tiff. Common mail list file formats include: .csv, .txt, .xls.

File Format
Unique for different file types, it specifies how information is organized. Common artwork file formats include: .eps, .jpeg, .pdf, .ps, .psd, .tiff. Common mail list file formats include: .csv, .txt, .xls.

Font
A set of type characters of a particular typeface design and size. Each typeface, such as Times Roman, Helvetica and Arial, is typically made available in four variations: normal weight, bold, italic and bold italic. Fonts mostly reside in the computer’s hard disk as “soft fonts.” However, with PostScript fonts, a basic set is built into the printer along with the PostScript rasterizing engine.

Graphic Design
The arrangement of type and visual elements along with specifications for paper, ink colors and printing processes that, when combined, convey a visual message.

Grayscale
A strip of 256 gray values ranging from white to black.

Half-tone
An image composed of tiny dots whose variations in size create the illusion of variations in tone. In the past, a halftone screen was used to convert a continuous tone image into a halftone; today, such screening is done electronically.

Image
A computerized representation of a picture or graphic.

Joint Photographic Experts Group (.JPEG)
A file format used for color images. This format retains a high degree of color while requiring less storage space than needed for other file formats. Uncompressed JPEG files can be used for high-quality printing. It is best to save images with many colors, such as a photograph, as a .jpeg.

Kerning
A term that refers to the amount of space between letters

Line Art
Artwork consisting of solid blacks and whites with no shades of gray.

Pixel
Short for picture element. Pixel is the smallest unit (point) of an image displayed on a computer screen. The quality of an image, usually expressed as “image resolution”, depends on the number of pixels per inch that make up the image.

Photoshop Document (.PSD)
A file format for documents created and saved in Adobe Photoshop as layered images, which makes editing different parts of an image at a later date far easier. It is the only file format supporting all available image modes (Bitmap, Grayscale, Duotone, Indexed Color, RGB, CMYK, Lab, and Multichannel), guides, alpha channels, spot channels, and layers.

Portable Document Format (.PDF)
A universal file format developed by Adobe Systems to preserve all fonts, formatting, graphics, and colors of any source document. PDF allows any file to be read by the Acrobat reader regardless of the hardware or software platform on which the file was created.

PostScript (.PS)
A software language for printing that describes fonts, images and graphics as mathematical expressions that do not require fonts or other dependent files.

Pre-Flight
The procedure used to ensure digital files are correctly prepared for production. Learn how to properly preflight your files here.

Print-Ready Files
Digital artwork files that are 100% ready to print, requiring no additional adjustments by Action Printing other than preflighting and standard prepress work. Before submitting your digital files, you should feel free to review our file preparation guidelines.

Primary Colors
The colorants of a system used to reproduce the colors for the entire reproduction. Cyan, magenta, and yellow are subtractive primary colors while red, green, and blue are additive primary colors. The subtractive colors along with black are used in four-color printing process used by Action Printing.

Process Colors
Colors that are created using combination of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.

Proof
Proof, also known as hardcopy proof, is a close representation of the final printed piece provided by Action Printing. A proof is provided to predict results on press and record how the final printed piece will appear in terms of color, layout and accuracy. Production does not begin printing the final piece until the proof has been approved by the client.

Resolution
Resolution is the number of pixels displayed per unit of length in an image, usually measured in pixels per inch (ppi) or dots per inch (dpi). Computer monitors are normally 72 to 96 dpi while most printed pieces are 300 dpi or more.

Raster Graphic
Commonly referred to as bitmap images, are digital images stored as arrays of pixels for display and modification. The graphic’s resolution is limited by the capabilities of the display device. Adobe Photoshop is a popular image editor that rasterizes images that it opens.

Common raster graphic formats include BMP (bitmap), GIF (Graphics Interchange Format), JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group), PNG (Portable Network Graphics), and TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) are raster image formats.

RGB
The additive primary colors – red, green and blue – that are used in computer monitors to create all colors. RGB is similar to CMYK used in process printing in that all colors are created by various combinations of a few base colors. However, the colors seen on an RGB screen will only accurately represent the colors printed in CMYK when calibrated computer systems and translators are used.
Example Image

Rich Black
A black made by mixing other colors of ink with black ink to produce a much darker, deeper black on press than can be achieved by using black ink alone. To create rich black on pieces printed by Action Printing, your CMYK calibration values must be 50% Cyan, 40% Magenta, 40% Yellow, and 100% Black.

Spot Colors
This refers to a color that does not go through the CMYK process to obtain color values. Instead, each color in a document is created using that exact color, not a mixture of CMYK halftone values.

Tagged Image File Format (.TIFF)
One of the most widely supported file formats for storing images on a computer. TIFF can handle up to 24 bits of photographic image, but TIFF is an older format that requires more storage space than needed for files in .JPEG or .PSD formats.

Template
A pre-developed page layout in electronic or paper media used to create new pages from the same design, pattern, or style Action Printing has developed several templates to help you set up your designs correctly for a quicker turn-around

Vector Graphic
Images created using mathematical statements that define geometric shapes. You can move, resize, and change the color of vector graphics without losing any image quality. Unlike bitmaps, vector graphics are not dependent on resolution. You can scale a vector graphic to any size and it won’t lose detail or clarity.

Common vector file formats include: .ai (Adobe Illustrator), .cdr (Corel Draw), .dxf (AutoCAD), .mif (Maker Interchange Format), .svg (Scalable Vector Graphics) and .wmf (Windows Metafile).