Printing
Bleed: When an illustration runs all the way to the edges of the page or sheet after it’s trimmed.
Colour separation: The separation of multicoloured original art by camera or laser-scan techniques to produce individual separated colours. There are four common separations: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.
CMYK – C – Cyan, M – Magenta, Y – Yellow, K – Black: The four colours used by conventional offset printing presses to create images that, to the naked eye, appear to be full colour. The printing process itself is referred to as a four-colour process.
Die: A mold into which molten metal, plastic or other material is forced to make a specific shape. Also, a tool of very hard material used to press a particular shape into or onto a softer material.
Die Charge: A charge by the supplier for creating a die from artwork supplied by the buyer.
Four-colour process (4CP): A printing process by which small, semi-transparent dots of the four standard process colours (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) are printed to simulate full colour.
Halftone: An engraving made by photographing through a glass screen that breaks the subject into small dots of varying intensities of grey ranging from white to black.
Pantone Matching System (PMS): A colour scale used to precisely match colours for printing. Each hue has a coded number indicating instruction for mixing inks to achieve that hue.
Plate: A rubber or metal image carrier that transfers ink to the printing surface.
Process Printing: Output from a printing press that uses four colours (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) to create the illusion of continuous tone images. For that reason, cyan, magenta, yellow and black are also known as process colours (CMYK).
Screen: A series of dots used to reproduce halftones or blended colours. As the screen percentage increases, the colour darkness also increases.
Screen charge: A charge by suppliers for creating a silk screen of the artwork used for imprinting products.
Screen Printing: An imprinting method in which the image is transferred to the printed surface by ink squeezed through a stencilled screen stretched over a frame.
