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Newsletters Plus Ten Ways to Save Money & Get More from Your Printing Budget, Part 2: A Printing GlossarySome Useful Terms Bleed – when the ink "runs off" the edge of the sheet (like the cover of this magazine); in reality it is printed on a larger sheet and then trimmed. Folds –some folds are easier (and cheaper) than others. Simple folds are half-fold, letterfold, Z-fold, accordion (like a Z-fold but more panels), and barrel or roll fold. The trickiest parallel fold is a double gate fold, in which the two outside edges fold towards the center twice; this adds time and expense. Register – the fit between the edges of a multicolor job. Images with very tight register over large areas are more difficult, especially for small press work. Trapping – one color of ink slightly overlaps another to give the illusion of fitting together perfectly and leaving no white space in between. Halftone – a technical trick used in printing to reproduce a range of shades with a single color of ink by breaking up the image into tiny dots. All printed photographs use some version of halftoning. It is increasingly common for documents created in electronic format to have the photos scanned in, which halftones them. However, beware of poorly done scans; when in doubt, ask for a proof before printing and allow time for fixes. A related item is a screen tint, which is filling in an area with a percentage of solid ink. Very dark tints (over 70%, sometimes ast little as 45%) tend to "fill in" to solid when printed. Dot Gain - occurs when ink is transferred from the plate to the blanket of the press and finally to the paper on which it is being printed. A dot for a halftone or a screen gets larger because of to the mechanical process of transferring ink. Dot gain can be and is controlled by strict quality measures. The scanning of halftones must be tightly controlled to compensate for dot gain on press to ensure that halftone quality does not suffer. Dot gain results in colors and screen tints looking much darker than originally expected or intended. Pinched type – the filling in of small lettering that reverses out of a solid background. Ghosted image – "screening back" (halftoning to a lighter shade) of an image or solid to allow for type to be legible in front of it. This type can sometimes be hard to read if the background image is busy. Cracking – the result of the paper surface and/or ink film breaking on a fold, and is most undesirable where there is heavy ink. Heavy stocks and coated paper aggravate this situation; special scoring minimizes it. Save on your Printing Budget (part 1) |