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A - Z of Print Terminology
ADF or Automatic Document
Feeder
An attachment to
either a scanner or a fax machine that automatically feeds one sheet of
paper at a time. Usually, these documents will already contain printed data.
Anti-aliasing
A technique where graphics, including text, are made to look
smoother and so better looking and easier to read. The intensity of some
pixels are adjusted to fool the eye into seeing a smooth line.
Auto Density Control
Auto Density Control helps the printer maintain consistent colour.
Auto Trapping
Trapping creates an overlap between adjoining areas of
colour. This compensates for registration problems when printing the C, M, Y
and K planes of an image. Auto trapping can be switched on and off in the
printer's PostScript driver.
Banner Paper
Long sheets of strong paper to allow for bigger printing.
Usually used for making a statement, organisation charts, flow charts,
statistics and planners. Banner paper is available in both A4 and A3 widths
Bind Margin
An increased margin that accommodates the reduction in paper
area when a document is bound.
Black Finish
Black Finish is a printer driver option that controls the way
in which black is printed in colour documents. There are two options, true
black where black toner is used to print black and composite black where
equal amounts of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow toner are used to print black.
True black is best used for text whereas composite black is best used for
photographs.
Black Overprint
Black overprint is when 100% black text is printed over a
coloured background without removing the coloured background from behind the
text. Black overprint is used to prevent registration problems where a white
space can appear around each character.
Bleed
When a printed area extends beyond that required then this is
called a bleed. 1) Print outside required area so that, once trimmed, the
image extends to the edge of the paper. 2) Overlay colours to minimise any
registration issues.
Booklet Printing
Booklet printing refers to a feature where the printed
document mimics the format of a book. To do this the pages within the
document are re-ordered allowing the printed sheets to be folded to create
the book. When printing large documents in booklet format the signature
option should be used to create a manageable amount of paper to be folded.
Please refer to the signature description for more information.
Chromability
In-house colour printing made easy from Oki. Chromability is
about making it easy for everyone in your office to produce professional
results in colour.
CMYK
Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black. These are the physical colours
used by the printer to create colours on the printout. Graphic Art users
generally use CMYK values to define colours in their DTP applications.
Collate
In a printing context, collate refers to printing pages of a
document in their correct order.
Colour Registration
The CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) printing process
uses overlapping inks of cyan, magenta, yellow and black. To produce the
best possible output, the colours must print in specific positions so that
overlaps are accurate. If the colours are not aligned, the resulting print
may appear to be blurred, or have white space around text or produce
undesired colour.
Consumables
In printing terms, consumables or consumable items refer to
parts of the printer which have to be replaced once their life has expired.
For example, a toner cartridge is classified as a consumable item.
Crop
This is where the edges of a picture or page are trimmed or
cropped to make it fit a certain size or to generally just remove unwanted
parts of an image or page.
Crop Marks
Markings indicating where cuts should be made e.g. to trim
unwanted margins or to separate business cards.
DPI
Dots Per Inch. The number of pixels or Dots per inch of an
image. This is also known as 'resolution'. The higher the resolution, the
better the quality of print.
Driver
Software that allows your PC to communicate with an external
device e.g. a printer driver converts output to the correct format for a
printer to produce an image.
Driver Setting
Refers to the options you have set for your printer in the
printer driver. For example you can configure the printer to always print on
both sides of the paper.
Duplex printing
Print on both sides of the paper.
Duplex Unit
The part of your printer that allows you to print on both
sides of the paper i.e. duplex printing [not all printers can print duplex
and a duplex unit may need to be purchased separately and installed.]
EPS
Encapsulated PostScript is a computer file format that
contains Postscript commands and a special descriptive header. EPS is widely
used as it can be scaled to suit the users requirements with no loss of
quality.
Finishing / Finisher
A finisher is an output device that is attached to a printer
that performs certain finishing functions to a printed document. Examples of
finishing functions are stapling, hole punching and folding.
FLASH Memory
FLASH is a type of non-volatile memory which is used within
Oki's printers to store font data, macros, templates and the printer's
configuration settings.
Font
A set of characters having the same typeface and
characteristics such as size, spacing and italic.
Greyscale
Term used when an image is represented by many shades of
grey.
GSM
Grammes per square metre - a way of specifying the weight of
paper. Typically office paper will be 80 to 100 gsm
Gutter
A printing term for space left between two items on a page.
E.g. between left and right pages, between columns of text.
Halftone
Halftone refers to the process used to arrange printed dots
on a page to simulate shades of either colour or grey. For example when the
number of printed dots within an area is higher this creates a deeper
colour.
HDD
Some Oki printer models include a Hard Disk Drive (HDD) which
can be used to store fonts, templates, overlays as well as being used to
store print jobs.
Hue
Hue is the wavelength of light reflected or transmitted from
an object. However, hue is more commonly known as the actual colour, such as
red, yellow, or blue.
Job Offset
Job Offset is where each printed document in the printer's
output tray is offset to either the left or right of the previous printed
document allowing each document to be easily identified.
Landscape
In printing terms, Landscape is used when describing the
paper orientation. In this case the width of the page is greater than the
height.
LED Technology
Oki's printers are electro photographic printers where a
light source shines light on a light sensitive drum creating an attractive
charge like a magnet. Toner is then attracted to this charge and then
transferred to the paper and finally fused in place. The light sources
employed by Oki printers are known as Light Emitting Diodes or LED's for
short. Digital LED Technology has a number of advantages such as no moving
parts allowing faster printing and higher print quality
Media Check
Media check is a function that checks that the paper size
selected with the print job matches the size of paper in the printers paper
tray. If the size does not match, an error message is displayed on the
printer's operator panel.
Memory
Oki's printing devices contain various types of electronic
memory which provide various functions: RAM - Random Access Memory. The
printer uses RAM in a similar way as a PC uses RAM. When the printer
receives a print job, the data is stored in RAM while the printer processes
it. Certain functions like DUPLEX printing and printing banners are memory
intensive applications and therefore require larger amounts of RAM. Many of
Oki's printers can have additional RAM added as an option. FLASH - Is a type
of non-volatile memory which is used within Oki's printers to store font
data, macros, templates and the printers configuration settings. Typically
the amount of FLASH within the printer is fixed and cannot be expanded. ROM
- Read Only Memory. ROM is used to store the printer's firmware as well as
any resident font data. Like FLASH memory, the size of the ROM is fixed and
cannot be expanded.
MFP
In printing, MFP is a commonly used term to represent Multi
Function Products which are devices that that have more than one function
such as being able to print, scan and fax.
Monochrome
A Monochrome printer only uses one colour of toner. The term
Monochrome Printing is quite often described as black and white printing as
the toner is normally black and the paper is often white in colour .
Multi-purpose tray (MPT)
A multi-purpose tray is an input tray which can handle
different types and sizes of media such as paper, envelopes, transparencies,
labels etc.
N-Up
N-Up refers to a feature where you can print multiple pages
of a document onto one sheet of paper. The 'N' in N-Up is the number of
pages that can be printed on a single sheet. For example 4-Up would print
four pages on a single side of paper. If this is combined with Duplex
printing (printing on both sides of the paper) a single sheet of paper could
contain 8 pages, four on the front and four on the back.
Oki Colour Matching
Colour Matching refers to the process within the printer that
is used to manage the production of colour. Oki Colour Matching is Oki's
unique colour matching system which has been designed to produce high
quality colour reproduction with Oki's printers.
Operating System
An operating system is the core program that manages all
other resources and applications on a computer. Examples of operating
systems include Microsoft Windows, UNIX, Apple MacOS.
Page Description Language (PDL)
A page description language (PDL) specifies the layout and
contents of a printed page. Hewlett Packard's Printer Control Language (PCL)
and Adobe's Postscript are the two most commonly used PDLs.
Pagination
Pagination has numerous meanings but in general it refers to
defining where separate pages are formed within a document and how they are
formatted.
Paper Tray
Paper tray refers to the area within a printer where the
paper is stored. The input tray is where the blank paper is stored before
printing whereas the output tray is where the printed documents are stored.
PCL
Printer Control Language was developed by Hewlett-Packard to
allow applications to control their printers. PCL has also been adopted by
other printer vendors including Oki.
PDF
PDF (Portable Document Format) is an electronic file format
developed by Adobe. PDF files retain the same formatting as the original
document and can be viewed by Adobe Acrobat Reader without the need for the
original application.
Portrait
In printing terms, Portrait is used when describing the paper
orientation. In this case the height of the page is greater than the width.
Poster Print
Poster print is an option where a page of a document can be
enlarged by printing it across multiple pages.
PostScript (PS)
PostScript is a page description language that was developed
by Adobe and is now an industry standard.
Power Save Mode
Power save mode is an energy saving feature of printers. In
Power Save Mode, the printer will, after a specified length of time, allow
the fuser unit to cool, stop the fans (dependent on printer type) and motors
and stop any processor activity. In this state the printer consumes less
power than when printing or waiting to print. The length of time the printer
waits before power save mode is configurable. Oki's printer products comply
with Energy Star.
ppm
Pages per minute - A unit for measuring print speed.
Print Media
Print media refers to the material being used to print on.
Typical office print media consists of paper, transparencies, labels,
envelopes.
Proof Print
Proof printing allows a single copy of a document to be
printed for checking before printing multiple copies of the same document.
After the proof print has been printed, the user has the choice of printing
the remaining copies or cancelling the entire job. To use this function the
printer must have an internal hard disk drive (HDD) installed.
Resolution
Resolution is concerned with the number of fundamental
imaging elements that a printing device can reproduce. Resolution is
measured in Dots Per Inch (DPI).
RGB
RGB (Red, Green and Blue) refers to a colour system used in
video technology equipment such as computer monitors and television screens.
These types of imaging technology use Additive Colour Reproduction. For
example, each pixel on a computer monitor is made up of these three colours.
If equal amounts of red, green and blue are applied, the human eye will see
this as white. Office applications use RGB values to define colours.
Saddle Stitch
Saddle Stitch refers to a finishing process, where the sheets
of paper are folded and secured by applying staples along the fold to
produce a book format.
Saturation
Saturation represents how pure a colour is. It is the amount
or strength of the colour. Saturation is measured as a percentage from 0% to
100%. If a colour has a saturation of 0% then the colour will contain no hue
and would appear grey. On the other hand, if the saturation of a colour is
100% then the colour will appear fully saturated.
Secure Print
Secure printing is where a PIN (Personal Identification
Number) can be assigned to each print job sent to the printer. The user has
to enter the PIN number into the printer's operator panel in order to have
the document printed. This feature is useful when a confidential document
needs to be printed on a shared network printer. To use this function the
printer must have an internal hard disk drive (HDD) installed.
Signature
The signature function is used in conjunction with booklet
printing. The spine of a book is made up of numerous smaller booklets which
are then bound together. For example, if you fold a sheet of A4 paper in
half you can create 4 pages of A5. The signature option limits the amount of
pages used to print individual booklets in order to make folding easier. |
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