Printing Glossary A~Z

ATM?
Adobe? Type Manager? software, which makes type appear sharp and clear on-screen and in print. Character Identifiers (CID)
A new type of font that has a simplified internal structure and a compact file size, resulting in improved performance for large character sets such as Chinese, Cyrillic, Japanese, and Korean.

Color Management System (CMS)
Software that allows applications and printer drivers to access information about the color characteristics of monitors, printers, and scanners. The Color Management System uses the color information to provide accurate and consistent color to the output device.

Computer-to-Plate (CTP)
A technology that allows for the delivery of digital data directly to a plate for printing. CTP efficiency eliminates conventional films and stripping to significantly reduce prepress materials and costs, and allow for significant productivity benefits over other commercial printing solutions.

Device-Independent Color (DIC)
Color that is independent of the color characteristics of any particular device used in the printing process. Device-independent color allows colors to be predictably and accurately matched among various printing devices.

Direct Digital Printing
Commercial-quality printing in which electronic source files are processed directly on the printing press or printing system, rather than through analog steps such as film imagesetting and platemaking. Direct digital printing systems may be based on lithographic offset technology or laser/toner technology. Front-end RIPs and servers are integrated components of these printing systems.

Direct-to-Plate Printing
Imaging directly to the plate material used in offset lithographic printing. The traditional offset printing process includes generating film (typically from an imagesetter today), "burning plates" by exposing the aluminum or poly printing plates with the film, and mounting the resulting plates on offset presses. Direct-to-plate printing eliminates the film imaging step by imaging directly on the plate material.

Distributed Printing
Printing directly to printers (imagesetters or direct digital presses) that are located far from the operator's workstation. May include multiple destinations for a single job. Often associated with on-demand and short-run printing.

Dots Per Inch (DPI)
A measure of the resolution of a device. The higher the number, the sharper the type and images.

Encapsulated PostScript (EPS)
A standard file format for importing and exporting PostScript? language files among applications in a variety of heterogeneous environments.

Film Recorders
Devices that generate film negatives and positives for slides and other photographic needs.

Fonts
Typefaces in different styles that give documents personality.

Graphical Display Interface (GDI)
The display language interface for Microsoft Windows systems. GDI printers are compatible only with Windows systems and do not offer the performance and features available with Adobe PostScript or Adobe PrintGear? printers.

Imagesetters/Typesetters
Devices that generate the highest resolution paper, plate, and film output for professional publishing needs.

Imposition
The process of arranging individual pages on a form in preparation for the printing press so that the pages will be in proper sequence after printing, folding, and binding.

Interface
The ways a printer may be connected to a computer or network. Adobe PostScript printers support a wide variety of interfaces, including serial, parallel, AppleTalk, and Ethernet.

International Color Consortium (ICC)
A group of companies chartered to develop, use, and promote cross-platform standards so that applications and devices can exchange color data without ambiguity. Founding members include Adobe, Agfa, Apple, FOGRA, Kodak, Microsoft, Silicon Graphics, Sun, and Taligent.

Interpreter
The Adobe PostScript Raster Image Processor (RIP) that translates the instructions in a PostScript language file sent from the printer driver.

Offset Printing
The most common commercial printing technology in use today. Offset printing applies layers of ink on the page. For each layer, a reverse image of the page is placed on a roller in the printing press. Ink is applied to the non-image areas on the roller, so that as the roller presses against paper moving through the press, the proper image is left on the paper.

On-Demand Printing
Commercial-quality printing produced as needed with turnarounds of a few hours or less. Often associated with very short runs of a hundred or fewer pieces. A newer class of device - the direct digital printing system - is usually associated with on-demand printing.

Open Prepress Interface (OPI)
A set of PostScript language comments for defining and specifying the placement of images on an electronic page layout.

Page-Description Language (PDL)
Software that resides within a printer and defines how elements such as text and graphics appear on the printed page. PostScript is the industry-standard page-description language.

Pages Per Minute (PPM)
The maximum speed of the printer's marking engine as rated by the manufacturer.

Pixel
The smallest dot that can be produced on a computer screen.

Printer Control Language (PCL)
A set of printer commands, developed by Hewlett-Packard, that provide access to printer features. PCL printers are compatible only with MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows systems and do not offer the complete device independence and range of choice available with Adobe PostScript printers, or the performance and features available with Adobe PrintGear printers.

Prepress
The steps required to turn a design into final form, ready for final printing on a printing press. May include preflight, color correction, color trapping, imposition, color separation, proofing, and imagesetting.

Printer Driver
Software that serves as the communication link between applications and the page-description language used by printers.

QuickDraw
The display language interface for Apple Macintosh systems. QuickDraw printers are compatible only with Macintosh systems and do not offer the performance and features available with Adobe PrintGear printers.

RAM
Random access memory, measured in megabytes. The higher the number, the more space available for storing data, such as downloaded fonts.

Raster Image Processor (RIP)
The hardware and/or software that translates data from PostScript and other high-level languages into dots or pixels in a printer or imagesetter.

Resolution
The sharpness of text and graphics provided by any printer or output device, measured in dots per inch.

Stochastic Screening
A method that uses a pseudo-random dot size and/or frequency to create halftoned images, but without the visible regularity in the dot patterns found in traditional screening.

Trapping
The process of creating an overlap between abutting colors to compensate for imprecisions in the printing press.

TrueType Fonts
Scalable typefaces for Windows and Macintosh software.

Type 1 Fonts
Adobe's industry-standard outline font technology that enables type to be scaled to any size while staying sharp and clear. More than 20,000 Type 1 typefaces are available from vendors worldwide.