glossary of printing terms

 

Author’s Alterations (AA’s)
All corrections made to jobs which vary from the original file submitted to the printer. AA’s are charged to the customer

 

Bleed
An image which runs off the edge of a page.

 

Blueline proof (also called salts or blues)
A representation of the printed piece that is made before printing for the purposes of inspection. Customers sign off on blueline proofs to approve the production of the job. 

Dummy
Sheets folded and made up to show the size, shape, form, sequence and general style of a contemplated piece of printing.

 

Duotone
Similar to a halftone, but an image that is composed of 2 halftones that interact with each other. Duotones can add depth and richness to black and white photos.

Halftone
A method (invented in the 1880’s) of translating the continuous-tone of a photograph into dots of various sizes, which creates the optical illusion of various shades of grey, although each dot is perfectly black.

Large Solid
A screened or solid area of non-text ink coverage which extends over more than 50% of the page.

Layout Program
A computer program that creates a production-ready file for a print job. Preferred layout programs are Pagemaker and Quark. 

 

Perfect Binding
A type of book binding. The sheets are folded into page size panels and folded. The spine edge is cut and the cover is glued on at the spine.

 

Press Proof
An actual sample of the printed copy, made for the purpose of inspection. All press proofs are scheduled at the beginning of a run, and customers must be available on site to view the proof.

Process Color Printing (also called “full color," “4-color” or CMYK)
A multi-color original is scanned and converted into an image that will print in the four process colors—cyan, magenta, yellow and black. The combination of dots of these 4 colors creates an optical illusion of thousands of different colors 
 
Saddle Stitching
The most common and least expensive type of binding for booklets. The sheets are folded and stapled from the backbone through the center fold.

 

Sheet-fed Printing
A type of printing press for which the paper must be cut into separate sheets before printing, as distinguished from a web-fed press which prints paper fed from large rolls. (Typically newspapers are printed on web presses) Red Sun Press has sheet fed presses.

 

Spot Color Printing
Printing where the colors are separated in the production process and each color is printed with a specific ink that matches the printed color. Red Sun uses the Pantone Matching System (PMS). By specifying a particular PMS color, you can be assured of receiving a correct color match. PMS colors need to be viewed on PMS guides—the color shown on computer monitors or with color laser printouts are approximations, but not accurate for exact color. 

Trim size
The final size of a printed piece. The trim size of a booklet or book is its size after it has been bound and trimmed.