A technical association based in Sewickley, Pennsylvania and active in the printing industry. In 1999 the organization merged with the Printing Industries of America (PIA) and now has some 14,000 members in 60 different countries.

The range of colors that can be produced by a color system; tonal value and color range that can be produced or reproduced by a system or process depending on the color space and colorants used. See also "color space".

A device for stitching printed products and creating magazines, brochures, etc. from printed and folded sheets. The print sheets and jacket are collated in the correct order, aligned and then stitched using wire staples. Finally, the volume is cut on three sides. This separates the sheet folds that do not lie on the spine edge, and thus the booklet takes on its familiar shape.

A tool used to give images, graphics and photos a “blurred” or “softened” look. It is often used in the design of background graphics, which seem to be “cushioned” into the background.

Former name of the International Digital Enterprise Alliance (IDE Alliance).

The process by which gray tones are proportionally removed from the exact amounts of cyan, magenta and yellow that make up gray and replaced by the corresponding quantity of black ink. This is primarily performed for neutral color tones and in the gray components of unsaturated colors. The process allows for ink reduction and reduces the effects of color shifts.

An error that can occur in such indirect printing processes as offset when screen dots have double or multiple contours. It can be observed in single-color printing, but more often in multi-color printing. Faulty printing of this type increases the screen tonal value and leads to dot gain. This slight shift in the position of the printing elements is caused by register fluctuations during printing, which may themselves be caused by the paper or the press.

A storage format for images and graphics involving lossy compression and that allows 256 colors to be displayed from any pallet. The data format was introduced by the Compuserve online service in 1987, which makes it one of the oldest of its kind. GIF remains one of the most widely-used formats for online publication, and also allows for image animations.

A unit of measurement abbreviated as “G” or “GB” that approximately corresponds to one billion bytes. It is used to quantify memory or disk capacity

A highly greaseproof, but not wet-resistant paper grade made of finely ground pulp. It is highly supercalendered and therefore relatively transparent

A symbol carved in stone; in typography a letter with more than one variant in an alphabet, such as “s” in German as well as Greek.

A process for shaping the surface of paper into a pattern, usually with fine grooves.

See "gamma value".

The direction in which the pulp fibers of a sheet of paper are aligned as a result of the papermaking process.

Terms used to indicate whether the paper web should travel through the paper machine lengthwise or widthwise, which in turn is generally indicated by marking whether the width or length of the paper should correspond with the machine's reel width. The fibers (and thus the grain) lie parallel to the edge not indicated.