Abrasion. Wearing away of the surface of a label due to friction.

Abrasion Resistance. Ability of an ink, coating, lamination, etc. to withstand repeated rubbing. Sometimes referred to as scuff resistance.

Absorption. The penetration of one substance into another. Could be ink into paper or adhesive migrating into the stock.

Accelerate. Anything done to speed up an otherwise natural process such as drying time of inks or coatings.

Accelerator. A substance or method used such as adding solvents to inks or the use of Ultra Violet lamps to speed the drying time.

Across Web. Simply a 90° angle to the running direction of the press.

Adhesive. Applied to label material for adhesion to container. Adhesives are for many different applications - hot or cold, wet or dry, removable or no removable.

Anilox Roll. Mechanically or laser engraved, ceramic coated or steel roll that is chrome plated for durability. This roll controls the amount of ink transferred to the printing plate through the number of cells per square inch and the size of the cells.

Artwork. The first step toward plates. Includes design, logos, text, UPC symbol. Traditionally done as B&W but now artwork is done in full colour right away on computer.

Backlash. Looseness in the teeth of gears. All gears have a small quantity of backlash designed in. Excessive backlash can cause problems.

Back Printing. Printing on the adhesive side of a pressure sensitive label or the underside of a transparent film.

Barrier. Anagent used to separate one substance from another such as the silicone coating on the backing paper which carries the label. If this was not used the label would stick to the backing paper.

Bearer Bar. A thin bar running the length of the printing plate on both sides as an aid to maintaining equal pressure on the plate and to stop bounce.

Bleed. Most commonly refers to the area of colour beyond the die cut.

Butt Cut. Produces a rectangular label with square corners as opposed to the radiused corners common to die cut labels.

Caliper. The thickness of a stock or lamination. It is generally expressed in thousands of an inch (mils).

CMYK. Cyan, magenta, yellow and black are the base colours used to print photographic quality colour pictures. CMY are the primary colorants of the subtractive colour model.

Colour Balance. The blend of cyan, magenta and yellow required to yield a neutral gray.

Colour Cast. An overall colour imbalance in an image, similar to viewing the image through a colour filter or gell.

Colour Comp. A design which shows the position of all elements as they will appear in the printed job. Includes colours, type & type size, logos, pictures.

Colour Correction. A digital process that corrects deficiencies in the original colour image and sometimes for inconsistencies in the printing inks.

Colour Keys®. Photographic positives in cyan, magenta, yellow and black layered one on top of each. Appropriate for general colour, to check trapping Plus many special colours.

Colour Station. That section of the press used to print each individual colour.

Compression. The reduction in size of a digital image file. Low quality compression techniques are referred to as lossy while quality ones are referred to as non-lossy.

Contone. An abbreviation for continuous tone. A colour or grayscale image capable of illustrating continuously varying tonal ranges.

Core. A cardboard tube on which the labels are wound for shipment. Also, the often uneaten portion of an apple.

Crop Marks. Marks made on the outer edges of the artwork to designate areas to be printed, die edges and spacing between die cavities.

Custom Colour. Colour created using proprietary, usually pre-mixed printing inks, such as PMS (Pantone Matching System) colours.

Decompression. The expansion of a compressed image file.

Delamination. The partial or complete separation of the layers making up a laminate.

Densitometer. An instrument that registers the density of reflective and transparent materials.

Descreening. The removal of halftone dot patterns when scanning a previously printed image by slightly defocusing the image. This avoids moiré patterning during subsequent reprinting.

Dies. Used to produce circles, rectangles and irregular shapes. Extremely precise and produced using CAD equipment. They are heat treated for endurance.

Distortion. A compensation or reduction to image size in one direction only, always around the print cylinder.

Dot. The smallest element in a halftone.

Dot Gain. An increase in size of a dot from the film to the printed sheet. This can be compensated for digitally in the pre-press stage.

Duotones. Two colour halftones using any colours that work well together.

Dye Sublimation. A printing process using small heating elements to evaporate colour pigments from a carrier film and depositing them smoothly onto various substrates.

Editing. A review of the copy to make changes or corrections prior to film output and exposure of printing plates.

Edna. Beloved wife of company president John Robinson.

EPS. Encapsulated PostScript. A standard file format for a drawing, photo image or even a complete page which allows it to be placed into other documents. EPS files generally include a low res screen preview to aid in selection, a very useful feature when dealing with volumes of pictures.

Extender. A substance added to ink to reduce its colour strength, also to alter the viscosity of the ink.

Eyemarker. A small rectangle printed near the edge of the web providing a reference point for subsequent forming and operations such as glaminate tooth paste tubes.

FPM. Feet per minute. The running speed of the stock through the press.

FPO. For Position Only. A low resolution image placed in the document to indicate where the final image is to go. Speeds up document handling while changes are in progress.

Face Printing. Printing on the outer surface of a transparent substrate as opposed to back printing.

Fading. Reduction in colour strength due to exposure to light, heat or other influences.

Fill-in. Refers to the plugging with ink of the open areas in small type or when small type is reversed out of a solid block of colour.

Finish. A term referring to the degree of gloss or flatness of the substrate.

Flag. A small piece of coloured paper inserted in a roll of stock to alert quality control that an imperfection exists which must be removed by cutting and splicing the roll. Also something Sheila Copps burned about 23 million dollars on.

Flat. In the context of imaging it refers to a lack of contrast and tone. In film or plate making it refers to a final assembled multi-page or image piece of film or plate.

Flexography. A print method using a raised image printing plate mounted on various sized rotary print cylinders, inked by a roll and using paste-type and fluid inks.

Four-Colour Process. Printing of photographic like images using cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Enough said, there are volumes of books written on the subject.

Gamma Correction. Correction of tonal ranges in an image by the adjustment of tone curves.

Gear Chart. Reference chart of the various printing lengths or repeats that are obtainable from the different gearing combinations.

Gear Side. This is drive side of the press.

Ghosting. A faint image of the job being printed in areas which are not intended to be printed.

Giga-. A prefix indicating one billion.

Gigabyte. Unit of memory measurement approximately equal to one billion (1,073,741,824). One gigabyte equals 1,000 megabytes.

Grain. The direction of fibers in fibrous materials such as paper and wood.

Grain Direction. The direction of paper parallel with the run direction of a paper machine.

Graphics. The two basic types of computer-generated graphics are object-oriented, also called vector graphics, and bit-mapped graphics, often called raster graphics.

Greeking. The use of lines, bars or simulated typesetting to make the overall page layout apparent. This is done in advance of actual copywriting.

Greyscale. A continuous tone image made up of white, black and grey data.

Halftone. Photographic image formed when a screen is applied to a continuous tone photo. The image is broken down into various sized dots, which when viewed from a distance, appear to be a continuous tone.

Halo. An undesirable line around an image usually the result of too much squeeze on the printing plate.

Hard Copy. Printed output as compared to data stored on disk or hard drive.

Hertz (Hz). A unit of measure describing electrical vibrations. One Hz is equal to one cycle per second.

Hickey. Generally a small piece of foreign matter that has come between the print stock and the plate. The result is a small circular area of white where there should be colour.

Highlight. The lightest area in a picture.

Icon. An on-screen symbol in a user interface that represents a program file, data file or some other function.

Image Compression. The use of a compression utility to reduce the size of a graphics file that is consuming a large amount of disk space. Some can cause data to be lost.

Imagesetter. A device used to record digital data onto monochrome film and infrequently on paper.

Imageable Area. Imageable area is the finished size less a safe area for die cutting. In other forms of printing this safe area could also be for gluing, folding or fitting into another part.

Interpolation. In the context of image manipulation this is the increase of image resolution by the addition of new pixels throughout the image. The colours being added are made up of neighboring pixels.

Impact printer. A printer that forms a character by striking a physical representation of the character against an inked ribbon. Old typewriters are basically impact printers.

Import. To load a file created in one program into a different program.

Infection. The presence of a virus within a computer system. There are volumes written about viruses.

Inkjet Printer. A nonimpact printer that forms images by spraying ink from a matrix of tiny jets.

IT8. An industry standard colour reference target used to calibrate input and output devices.

Jaggies. In computer graphics, the jagged edge on type or graphic images. Look at a 72 dpi fax to see the condition without magnification.

Jog. To move the web along an inch or two at a time.

Journals. The shaft ends on which the rolls rotate.

JPEG. Joint Photographic Experts Group. This group has defined some of the file compression techniques that are among the most popular.

Justification. The alignment of multiple line of copy along the right margin, left margin or justify center.

Kernel Size. The number of pixels sampled as a group during image manipulation and sharpening processes.

Kilobyte (Kb). 1,024 bytes of digital data.

Kiss Impression. The lightest possible pressure of the printing plate on the stock.

Kiss Register. When colours are allowed to butt up one to the other without any overlap. This can make for a difficult time and white can peek through between the two colours.

Kromecote. A stock possessing a highly polished finish.

Laminate. To bond two layers of material together using adhesive.

Laser Printer. Generally refers to the B&W printers which employ dry toner, xerographic printing process. There are also colour lasers.

Layout. A preliminary sketch showing image placement, text, sizes, colour breaks and other details that will be incorporated into the final design.

Leading. The vertical spacing between lines of type. It is measured in points; the same as the typeface being used.

Line Growth. The growth in width of a printed line as a result of printing plate pressure on the substrate.

Lossy. A reference made to image compression utilities that remove minor tonal and colour variations. Causes a visible loss of detail at high compression ratios.

lpi/lpcm. Lines per inch or per centimeter. These units of measure are for screen ruling.

LZW. A compression technique Lempel-Ziv-Welch. Generally regarded as lossless.

Makeready. The set-up of the press prior to the actual run. Includes mounting plates, setting register, balancing colour and checking die cutting register.

Megabyte (Mb). 1,024 kilobytes or 1,048,576 bytes of digital data.

Midtone. The range of tones between shadow and highlight.

Modem. A device required to convert digital computer data into modulated analogue data for transfer along analogue telephone lines.

Moiré. An objectionable pattern caused by overlapping symmetrical grids of lines or dots having different angles.

Monochrome. Single-coloured.

Mottle. A speckled or randomly spotted appearance on the press proof.

Mounting Machine. A machine using the pin register method for mounting printing plates in exact register off of the press. Punched plates are mounted with the aid of special pins on the mounting drum.

Negative. A photographic image on film which is used to expose the printing plate.

Nip. This is the contact line where two rolls meet.

Noise. When an image is scanned and there is random specs or a slight snowy appearance to the image, it is said to contain noise.

Non-lossy. Term to describe image compression without any loss of quality.

Nonscratch. Printing ink which posess a strong resistance to abrasion once dry.

Off-Press Proof. A colour proof produced either digitally or using negatives to facsimile the actual press run.

Opacity. The ability of an ink or substance to block light or cover another colour.

Opaque. A medium used to paint out areas on a negative that are not desirable on the printing plate.

Original. The preferred material when reproducing colour work. This could be an artist's illustration, colour transparency or colour print.

Overprint. When one image is being printed on top of another.

OCR. Optical character recognition. Software that enables you to scan a typed document and convert it into editable text. Accuracy can vary and good proof reading is essential.

Penetration. A stock's ability to absorb inks and varnishes.

PDF. Portable document format (Adobe)

Photopolymer. Generic name used to describe materials which can be changed with exposure to ultra violet or regular light. These materials are the most commonly used plate material.

Pica. A typesetting measure. One sixth of an inch equals one pica or stated another way 12 points equals one pica.

PICT. A file format used to define drawings, photos and scanned images on the Macintosh.

Pixel. The smallest component in a digital picture is the picture element or pixel.

Point. A typesetting measure. There are 72 points in an inch.

Positive. A photographic image on paper or film matching the original. Can be made directly on an image setter or by exposing light through a negative in contact with a new film.

Production Run. The actual label production from approved artwork and colour proofs.

Progressive Proofs. Also called Progs, these are the individual process colours printed by themselves. This gives the pressman a chance to examine colour balance and compare the result to the plate negatives.

PSD. Photoshop saved file.

Quality Factor. A multiplication factor of between 1 and 2 that is applied to the output screen ruling so that the optimal value can be entered at the time of scanning.

Quality Control. The delicate balance between machines, material and personnel that will allow us to produce the highest quality possible while still making a profit.

Reducers. Additives used to change the viscosity or colour strength of the ink.

Register. The exact alignment of 2 or more images.

Rendering. An illustration or painting of any description done by hand using traditional pastels, pencils, pens, brushes and airbrushes, etc. Some of today's painting software such as Fractal Painter provide some stunning results that rival traditional materials.

Repeat. The absolute length of a print cylinder as determined by one revolution.

Retarder. A solvent added to ink to slow drying time.

RGB. Red, green and blue are the primary colours. All monitor display RGB and care must be taken in designing because the colours will not be as bright when converted to CMYK.

Rough Sketch. Usually done colour to block in all the elements making up the design.

Screen Angle. The direction of the halftone dots after a continuous tone has been converted into a halftone screening. Each process colour has a distinct angle.

Screen Ruling. The number of lines per inch, horizontal or vertical. The higher the number, the finer the image will be.

Separations. Most commonly a set of 4 halftone films (CMYK) resulting from scanned continuous tones being broken down into the process colours.

Shelf Life. The length of time that the labels remain unused yet will still meet or come close to original specifications for colour and adhesive properties.

Slit. To cut press rolls with multiple images across the web down to rolls of single image wide. Both rotary and stationary knives are used.

Slitter. A machine that cuts roll label stock in the long direction.

Slur. A term used to describe the resulting image when there is slippage between the plate and the substrate.

Splice. The point where two ends of roll stock are joined together.

Step & Repeat. The stepping of completed images across the web and around the cylinder.

Tints. Any value less than 100% which is achieved using screens. The result is a lighter value of the colour being printed.

Transparency. A photographic positive yielding colour that is more intense than photo prints.

Transparent Inks. These allow light to pass through them as opposed to opaque inks which can cover one another.

Turn Bars. Stationary bars are attached to press which guide the web so as to allow back printing of the stock.

Ultraviolet Lights. Identical to fluorescent tubes but they emit UV light. These are the light source that exposes the photopolymer plate material.

Undistorted Artwork. Artwork that has been completed without consideration for the distortion factor around the print cylinder that must be allowed for.

USM. Un-sharp masking. Go figure! This is a filter in Photoshop used to sharpen the image.

Varnish. Used as a binding component in ink and often overprinted as the last colour to provide scuff resistance. Can be a pattern, to allow for imprinting or a flood coat.

Vignette. A screened area where the colour starts at predetermined value and can fade off to the colour of the stock.

Viscosimeter. A device used to measure the viscosity of ink and pressroom chemicals.

Viscosity. A liquid's resistance to flow.

Wash Paintings. Paintings that use a very thin coat of paint such as watercolour.

Web. Refers to the substrate as it moves through the press.

Web Guide. A device which keeps the substrate from wandering as it travels through the press.

White Point. The lightest area in an image. Using an image manipulation program such as Photoshop, this point can be moved. Moving this point causes all other colours to be changed.