EVV Print Graphics Glossary

The loss of image quality — generally in color density — over time, often due to exposure to sunlight.

A family of type is the complete font set with all its related attributes. One family can include: roman, italic, bold, bold italic, black, black italic, light, light italic, thin, thin italic, plus all the condensed and expanded versions of the previously listed.

The structure in which digital information is stored, including appropriate headers. Most programs have a proprietary file format. For example, Microsoft Word files are saved as .doc, a format slightly different than WordPerfect’s file format. A program’s proprietary file format is called its “native format.” Many programs can open other file formats — Word can open a WordPerfect document, for example — although all the formatting may not display perfectly. There are may graphic file formats:.bmp, .eps, .psd, .tif, .jpg, etc.

Refers to when a graphic is applied to the viewing surface of the substrate (usually glass), as opposed to ‘Second Surface’ which is the opposite or inside surface of the substrate. First surface applications usually have more clarity as you are not viewing them through reflections on the outer surface of the glass.

A complete collection of letters, numbers and other characters in a particular typeface and size. For example, Arial and Helvetica are typeface families. Bold, Italic and narrow are possible typefaces. Each combination of typeface and size is a particular font. Arial Narrow 10pt is a font. Fonts are either bitmapped fonts or scalable fonts. Bitmapped fonts are fully generated ahead of time, meaning that a complete font set would include every character in each point size in each typeface. Scalable fonts are generated in any point size on the fly, so a complete font set would include every character in every typeface in one point size. Scalable fonts are also called outline fonts. The most popular outline fonts today are TrueType, Adobe’s Type1, and the new cross-platform OpenType format.

In typography, the point is the smallest unit of measure to represent letter height. It is used for measuring font size, leading, and other items on a printed page. Alternate units of measure (inches, millimetres) can be used for sizing but the point is standard.

The density of letters, traditionally described as light, regular, bold, extra bold, etc.

Identifies the size of a printer, media, or graphic, based on the width of media roll, the printer’s print area, or the dimensions of a graphic. At Spectrum Printing, Small Format includes everything up to 13″ wide and Large Format (Wide Format) encompasses everything above that.

The most common full-colour printing process which uses colour separation to produce one image for each of the four process colours (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black). Each colour is then overprinted to reproduce the full colour of the image.

A term that describes a printing process where the ink is placed past the edge of where the document will be trimmed so that the image extends to the edge of the paper. Printers generally cannot print to the edge of a piece of paper, since some portion of the paper is gripped by rollers that move the paper through the printer. To print a full bleed letter size page, the image is printed on a larger sheet of paper and trimmed to final size.