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Print Technology Warehouse - Printing glossary Category: Agriculture and Industry > Printing Date & country: 15/12/2007, UK Words: 1575

Film positive
Film exposed to a film negative and developed. Images appear with black hues opaque and white areas transparent. Required for photo stencils in serigraphy (screen printing).

Film processor
A machine that develops, fixes, washes and dries film and paper automatically.

Film-Klischee
Process devised by Film-Klischee GmbH, Munich, for making half-tone blocks out of swelled gelatine. First used in Britain in 1957.

Films
Acetate, polyester, polyethylene vinyls and other polymeric. Face material manufacturing from synthetic high molecular weight polymers.

Filter
Creative effects applied with an illustration program to selectively emphasise or de-emphasise all or portions of an image. Filters can be used to sharpen or blur images or apply special effects. Filters also allow text and graphic images to look like they were created using textured backgrounds or applied on various types of backgrounds using diff…

Final film
The positive or negative film used in the plate making.

Findings
Badge and jewellery fasteners such as pins, clips and clasps.

Fine line work
Refers to maps etc made up of many fine lines.

Fine rule
A hairline rule.

Finish
The surface characteristics of a paper. Finishes may be created on-machine or off-machine. On-machine finishing can be done two ways: for a smooth or vellum finish, pressure is imparted on the sheet with a finishing 'stack.' Laid of felt finishes are made with a marking roll, which actually presses the pattern into the paper while it's still wet. O…

Finishing
Finishing preparing printed pages for use. Most printed jobs require one or more finishing steps, such as trimming, folding, or binding.

Firewall
A router, or pair of routers, between the Internet and a private network to prevent unauthorised access.

First colour down
The first colour printed on a printing press.

First Read Rate
The percentage representing the number of successful reads per 100 attempts.

Fish Eye
Round or oval deformation in an adhesive, coating, or ink.

Fixing
A chemical action in photography to remove unexposed silver halide and make the image unresponsive to further exposure following development.

Flag
The designed title of a newspaper as it appears at the top of page one.

Flame polishing
A technique for smoothing and polishing the edges of a material using an open flame.

Flame Retardant
A material that resists burning when exposed to a flame.

Flap
A protective covering of artwork or mechanicals made by affixing a sheet of tracing paper or heavier paper over the face of the original.

Flat colour
Any colour other than process colour used in printing.

Flat pack
A continuous web folded at a cross perforation at regular intervals. See fan fold.

Flat tint halftone
A black halftone printed over a flat tint. Also called Fake duotone.

Flex
Another term for deflection of rolls or cylinders in press. Also, bending qualities or characteristics of any material, including printing substrates.

Flexible die
See magnetic die.

Flexible Engraving material
A soft, pliable, bendable thermoplastic material that is easy to cut and engrave.

Flexing
Condition that can occur on a die when the die circumference is less than the width of the cross-blades. Causes the center of the cross-blades to fail to cut properly and consistently.

Flexography
A direct (not offset) printing method that uses relief plates, similar to rubber stamps, which are made from rubber or photopolymer. The flexible plates are wrapped around a cylinder on the printing press. 'Flexo' works best when printing large areas of solid colour, making it popular for printing plastic bags, wrapping paper, and milk cartons. It'…

Flip
Repositioning a text or graphic object end for end. Objects can be flipped horizontally or vertically.

Floatation
Floatation a method for removing ink from paper during the de-inking process by floating if off the paper.

Floating accent
An accent mark that is set separately from the main character and is then placed either over or under it.

Flood coat
The coating of an entire surface with ink, adhesive, coating, etc.

Flop
To turn an image over in order to get a mirror image of it.

Floppy disk
1.4mb disc.

Fluorescent Dye
A colouring agent added to paper to increase its brightness. Fluorescent dyes give white papers added brilliance in natural light and may add a slight cast like blue or green.

Fluorescent Inks
Printing inks that both emit and reflect light. Generally, these inks are brighter and more opaque than traditional inks. Using one or more fluorescent inks can actually brighten a printed image - especially four-colour process printing on uncoated stock. On the down side, fluorescent inks are not colourfast and will fade in bright light and sunlig…

Fluorescent Paper
A paper that is coated with fluorescent pigment that not only reflects a visible wavelength, but also is activated by most of the remaining absorbed light to re-emit it as colour of a longer wavelength that results in reinforcement of the reflected colour.

Flush cover
A book cover trimmed to the size of the text pages.

Flush left
Copy aligned along the left margin.

Flush paragraph
First line is not indented.

Flush right
Copy aligned along the right margin.

Fly
A sheet folded once to make four pages.

Flyer
An inexpensively produced circular used for promotional distribution.

Flyleaf
End papers.

Focaltone
A proprietary colour matching system for process colour.

Foil
A very thin metal sheet that can be used as a face stock material in label production.

Foil blocking
A process for stamping a design on a book cover without ink by using a coloured foil with pressure from a heated die or block.

Foil paper laminate
A foil laminate to a sheet of paper used as a face stock. The foil is usually top coated to improve ink receptivity.

Foil Stamping
To cover paper with a thin, flexible sheet of metal or other material. The foil, which may be clear or opaque, comes in a range of colours, and is carried on a plastic sheet. Stamping separates the foil from the plastic and makes it adhere to the paper. Foil stamping can be combined with embossing or debossing as an added design element.

Fold lines
Marks usually printed in the trim areas to show where press sheets

Folding
Folding doubling up a sheet of paper so that one part lies on top of another. Folding stresses the paper fibers. To create a smooth, straight fold, heavy papers, like cover stocks and bristols, need to be scored before they're folded. Multiple fold strength is important in printed pieces like books, maps, and pamphlets. It's far less important in o…

Folio
Page number.

Font
A complete assortment of a size and face of type, including letters, punctuation, numerals and ligatures.

Food Contact Adhesives
Adhesives meeting specified sections of the Food & Drug Administration Code of Federal Regulations. These regulations cover direct food labelling as well as incidental contact. Special product recommendations are necessary for specific applications.

Foot
The margin at the bottom of a page.

Fore-edge or leading edge
Opposite to the back edge.

Form
The assembled pages and images as printed on a single large sheet, before trimming. With the correct imposition, the pages of a form will be in correct order after folding and trimming. Once folded and trimmed, a form becomes a 'signature.'

Form letter
Used in word processing to describe a repetitive letter in which the names and addresses of individuals are automatically generated from a database or typed individually.

Format
Particular style, size and layout specifications of a printed piece.

Format (files)
The way a file is saved to and retrieved from disk. There are many different file formats for all types of data. Some common graphic formats are EPS, DCS, AI, PICT, PNG, PS, DWG, DXF, SWF, JPEG, GIF, BMP and TIFF.

Formation
The uniformity of fibers in a sheet of paper. For example, paper with fine formation has evenly dispersed fibers, and will be smoother and more uniform than a paper with uneven formation. The tighter the fibers are bound, the more uniform the surface, and the better the printed sheet usually looks.

Formatting
Altering the appearance of text, graphic accents, or visuals by changing their formatting attributes, including - in the case of text - typeface, type size, leading, kerning and colour.

Forme
Type and blocks assembled in pages and imposed in a metal chase ready for printing.

Forme
The assembly of pages and materials for offset printing. Also known as a signature or any portion of a signature.

Former
The mechanism that makes the first fold of a web-fed press.

Foundry type
Type cast in hot metal.

Fountain
A reservoir for the ink supply in a printing press or one that supplies a solution for dampening the rollers of an offset press

Four-colour process
A method that uses dots of magenta (red), cyan (blue), yellow, and black to simulate the continuous tones and variety of colours in a colour image. Reproducing a four-colour image begins with separating the image into four different halftones by using color filters of the opposite (or negative) colour. For instance, a red filter is used to capture …

Fourdrinier
A papermaking machine with a horizontal continuous wire belt. A slurry of pulp is poured or sprayed onto the wire (forming fabric); the water is then drained off and pressed out; and the paper is dried.

FPO (For position only)
A small low resolution image that is used only to show the size and position of the final object, usually used either because the final object is too large or because the high resolution version is not yet available.

Fraction
A ratio of two whole numbers, such as 1/2 (one half). Presents a problem in typesetting because there are too many possible fractions to create a character for each one, so although some fractions are usually included in a character set, the rest must be typeset using subscripted and superscripted characters kerned around a solidus.

Frames
(a) boxes frequently used in word processing and DTP programs allowing text or visuals to be moved and locked to a specific position on a page or locked to adjacent text. These frames allow headlines to span more than one text column and allow pull quotes to be positioned between columns. (b) In Internet terminology frames are used to subdivide a b…

Freehand
Drawing program from Macromedia, competitor to Illustrator. Or, artwork drawn by hand.

Freesheet
Paper that contains no more than 10% mechanical wood pulp. Most freesheet papers are 'free' of mechanical (groundwood) pulp. See also pulping wood, uncoated freesheet, and uncoated paper.

Freezer adhesives
Adhesives that can be applied and will function at temperatures below the freezing point. They are usually removable at room temperature.

French fold
A sheet which has been printed on one side only and then folded with two right angle folds to form a four page uncut section.

FTP
File Transfer Protocol; allows the uploading or transfer of files or Web sites created on local computers to a host computer. Used to download files from a Web site to a visitor's computer. Examples of FTP software are Fetch and Anarchie.

Fugitive colour
Colours and inks that change/fade with exposure to light.

Full measure
A line set to the entire line length.

Full point
A full stop.

Furnish
Fully prepared pulp and all its ingredients: fiber, fillers, sizing, and pigments - diluted with water and ready for the papermaking machine. Furnish contains about 99% water.

Galley proof
First proof or rough proof made from the manuscript, used for editing and proofreading. They are taken from the galleys before being made up into pages. Also called Reader's proof.

Galleys
The printing term for long metal trays used to hold type after it had been set and before the press run.

Gamma
Measure of how compressed or how expanded dark or light tones become in an image. Gamma Utility in Photoshop calibrates the monitor for ambient light and phosphors - put very simplistically a measure of the lightness of a monitor.

Gamut
Range of colours available in a particular colour space, i.e. CMYK's gamut is very much less than both the visible spectrum and the spot colour gamut.

Gang run-printing
A cost-saving run that prints two or more jobs on the same sheet of paper.

Gatefold
An oversize page where both sides fold into the gutter in overlapping layers.

Gateway
Device linking dissimilar computer networks or a software protocol that allows one network to access another.

Gather
See Collate.

Gathering
Inserting the printed pages, sections or signatures of a book in the correct order for binding.

Gear chart
A handy reference compilation of the various printing lengths, or repeats obtainable within the different gearing systems.

Gear side
See driving side.

GEM
Digital Research's Graphics Environment Manager. A graphical interface designed both to make the operation of software simpler for the non-expert and to allow programs to communicate with one another. Two key desktop publishing packages, Ventura and DR's own GEM Desktop Publisher operate under this environment.

Generation
Succeeding phases in reproduction.

Ghosting (mechanical)
Printing problem that results from improper design/imposition decisions. It can be noticed when a light or dark repeat of an image appears above or below the actual image: (chemical or gas) An ink drying problem caused by excessive: (design) to ghost an image to 20% so that it acts a s a watermark, text legible over it at suitable weight.

GIF
An eight bit (256 colours or shades of grey) or less computer file format by CompuServe. Commonly used to post photographic images to computer bulletin boards and the Internet, GIF files are almost never used for professional printing.

GIF
Text imported or set within the app as HTML. Body copy is more appropriate as HTML, with the advantage of being searchable.

Gigabyte
109 bytes

Gilt edges
The application of gold leaf to the three edges of book. After application it is rubbed down; it prevents dust from getting into the publication.

Glassine
Super calendered, smooth, dense, transparent or translucent paper manufactured primarily from chemical wood pulps which have been beaten to secure a high degree of hydration of the stock. Sometimes used as a backing paper.