A

Acrobat A product developed by Adobe systems to create PDF (Portable Document Format) files. Acrobat is an independent means of creating, viewing and printing documents.

Airbrush A propellant using compressed air that to spray a liquid, such as paint and ink. Often used in illustration and photo retouching.

Alignment is the adjustment of arrangement or position in lines of a text or an image; left, right, centered, etc.

Anchor Point Anchor points allow the user to manipulate a paths shape or direction by clicking the point and moving it in a direction. They appear along the path at every curve and at the beginning and end of a path. You can also add or subtract anchor points on a path.

Animated GIF A small animation based on continuous GIF images, giving the impression of movement or action.

Animation Generating movement by displaying a series of images using frames.

Asymmetrical This is when graphics and/or text are not identical on both sides of a central line.

B

Bad Break Refers to widows or orphans in text copy, or any break that causes awkward reading.

Baseline An imaginary line upon which letters sit and descenders extend below the baseline.

Bevel A tool in design software for drawing angles or modifying the surface of work to a certain inclination.

Bitmap A series of bits is a structure that represents a graphic image. The colour of each pixel is individually defined.

Bleed When a graphic object extends through another in an unwanted manned. It is then trimmed so there is no chance for a white line on the edges.

Body Type The typeface used in the main text of printed matter.

Border The decorative design or edge of a surface or line or area that forms it’s outer boundary.

Busy Terms used to describe when something has too much information within a confined space.

C

Canvas Size Allows you to change the complete size of the document without adjusting the contents of the document

Cloning Pixels A function that allows you to replicate pixels from one place to another.

CMYK stands for ‘cyan’, ‘magenta’, ‘yellow’, ‘k(black)’.

Colour Palette A set of colours that make up the total range of colours used in graphic computers.

Contrast The difference in colour found between the light and dark parts of an image.

Copy Copy refers to editorial text supplied for incorporation into a design or website.

Crop A tool that removes portions of an image. It is usually used on digital photographs.

D

Descender The part of a lowercase letter that stretches below the body.

Dingbat An ornament used in typesetting to add space around an image or a symbol.

Dodge This is when you lighten or reduce part of an image by shading.

Double Page Spread A double page spread is a layout that extends across two pages.

DPI (Dots Per Inch) A term to describe the measure of sharpness within an image.

Drop Shadow Is a visual effect added to an image to give the impression the image is raised above the image’s behind by duplicating the shadow.

Duotone A method of printing an image using two colours, usually black and a spot colour.

E

Element Any distinct part of a layout, such as the logo, headline, images or borders.

Embedding Process of transferring all the data of a font or image into the file itself.

Emboss To give a three dimensional effect to a text or an image by using highlights and shadows on the sides of the illustration.

Engraving To print designs by cutting the surface of a metal plate.

Export To save a file in a format usable by other programs.

F

Feathering A tool used in graphic design software that makes the edges of an image appear softer.

Fill A tool used to fill selected parts of an image with a selected colour.

Filter A filter is a pre-created effect that can be applied to images to acquire a certain look.

Flyer A single sheet of paper handed out or posted on a wall to advertise or announce something.

Font A complete combination of characters created in a specific type of one style and size. The set of characters in a font include the letter set, the number set, and all of the special characters and marks you get when pressing the shift key.

Frames Refers to animation, a frame is a single graphic in a distribution of graphic images. The speed of an animation is judged by frames per second.

G

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) GIF images display up to 256 colours. It supports animation and allows an individual palette of 256 colour for each frame.

Gradient A function in graphic software that permits the user to fill an object or image with a smooth transition of colours.

Graphic Design Visual communication using text or images to represent an idea or concept. It is also a term used for all activities relating to visual design, including web design, logo design, etc.

Graphics Visual presentations that feature printed messages more clear or appealing.

Grayscale Grayscale images consists of black, white, no colour and up to 256 shades of gray.

Grid Is a two-dimensional format made up of a set of horizontal and vertical axis used to structure content.

H

Header The text which appears at the top of a printed page

Headline A large text illustrating the opening statement used in a layout.

Highlights Lightest part of a photograph or halftone, as opposed to mid tones and shadows.

High-Resolution Image An image with an extreme level of sharpness/clarity.

HLS A colour space that’s stands for hue, lightness and saturation.

HSB A colour space stands for hue, saturation and brightness.

Hue One of the three primary attributes of colour. A hue is a variety of colour such as red, blue, green or yellow.

I

Image Map An image map is an HTML document containing multiple clickable hyperlinks.

Indents A set in or back from the margin.

Invert Inversion of the tonal values or colours of an image. On an inverted image, black becomes white, blue becomes orange, etc.

Italic The style of letters that usually slope to the right. Used for emphasis within text.

J

JPEG (Joint Photographic Electronic Group) A common process for compressing digital images.

Justify To make a line of type a certain length by spacing out the words and numbers.

K

Kerning Modifying the horizontal space between letters.

Keyframe Any frame in which a specific aspect of an item (its size, location, colour, etc.) is specifically defined.

L

Layers A tool within graphic software that permits the user to gather, organize and re-edit their artwork.

Leading Refers to the amount of added vertical spacing between lines of text.

Legend A table on a map, chart, etc, listing the specific illustrations and how to use.

Lossy A form of data compression where detail is deleted as the file size are decreased. A usual lossy compression method is JPEG.

Lower Case The smaller form of letter used in type.

Low-Resolution Image A low-quality scan made from a photograph, or of the like.

Luminosity The brightness of an area arranged by the amount of light it reflects or diffuses.

M

Magic Wand Tool A tool in graphic software that permits the user to select fractions of an image, such as areas with the same colour.

Margins Guidelines in page layout software to show the user the body copy areas. It also allows the user to indicate the dimensions. Margins do not print.

Master Page A property found in page layout software that allows the user to create a constant page layout. Repeating elements like page numbers are created once on a master. This permits the user to stay clear of adding the numbers to each page manually.

Matte Finish Non-glossy finish on photographic paper or coated printing paper.

Mean Line The line on which the top parts of most of the lowercase letters lay. Also called x-height. The imaginary point of all lowercase characters without ascenders.

Multimedia Offering the use of various communications, such as text,sound, still or moving images.

N

Neon Glow A Type of glow on a graphic image that gives the appearance of neon lighting.

News Print Paper used in printing newspapers. Not very high quality paper.

Noise Noise is a term used to describe the development of pixels that contain random colours.

O

Oblique A Roman typeface which slants to the right. Often confused with italics.

Opacity The degree of a colour or tonal value. The opacity of an image or object can range from transparent (0% opacity) to opaque (100% opacity). The ability to edit the opacity of specific objects allows the designer to create images that seem to flow into and through one another.

OpenType New font format created by Adobe and Microsoft. Open Type font can include a set of glyphs defined as True Type or Type 1 curves.

Orphan Line The first line of a paragraph appearing on its own at the bottom on a page with the remaining part of the paragraph appearing on the next page.

Outline This can refer to the outside edge of a font or to the outer edge of a vector graphic image, drawn in a package such as Illustrator or Freehand.

Overlay Layer of material taped to a mechanical, photo or proof. Acetate overlays are used to divide colours by having some type or art on them instead of on the mounting board. Tissue overlays are used to carry instructions about the underlying copy and to protect the base art.

P

Page Layout Deals with the setup and style of content on a page. An example of a page layout is the pages in magazines or brochures.

Page Size A setting that allows the user to define the size of the page they are creating their artwork on.

PDF Stands for Portable Document Format. Developed by Adobe Systems in its software program Adobe Acrobat as a universal browser. Files can be downloaded over the Web and viewed page by page, provided the user’s computer has installed the important plug-in which can be downloaded from Adobe’s own Web site.

Pixel The smallest picture content that can be individually assigned a colour.

PNG Portable Network Graphics format. PNG (usually pronounced “ping”), is used for lossless compression. The PNG format displays images without jagged edges while keeping file sizes rather small, making them popular on the web. PNG files are generally larger than GIF files.

PPI Pixels Per Inch. A measurement of the resolution of a computer display.

Primary Colours The primary colours are put together to produce the full range of other colours (non-primary colours), within a colour model. The primary colours for the additive colour model is; Red, Green and Blue. The primary colours for the subtractive colour model is; Cyan, Magenta and Yellow.

Q

Quark Express Quark Express is page layout application usually used for magazine and brochures.

Quick Mask A filter in Photoshop in which a translucent coloured mask covers selective areas of an image.

R

Rasterize An image is said to be rasterized when transformed from vector image to a bitmapped image.

Resolution The resolution of an image is an important factor in deciding the attainable output quality. The higher the resolution of an image, the less pixilated it will be and the curves of the image will appear smoother.

RGB (Red, Green, Blue) RGB is the colour model used to project colour on a computer monitor. By combining these three colours, a large percentage of the visible colour spectrum can be represented.

S

Sans Serif A style of typeface that means “without feet.” Usual sans serif typefaces include Arial, Helvetica, AvantGarde and Verdana.

Saturation The Intensity of hue. The quality of difference from a gray of the same lightness or brightness

Scale A design or program is said to scale if it is relevantly efficient and reasonable when applied to larger situations

Selection Selection refers to an area of an image that is isolated so it can be edited while the rest of the image is protected.

Shadow Detail Shadow detail refers to the amount of detail held in the dark areas of an image. If the shadow is lightened too much in an attempt to expose more detail, the risk is there to reduce the overall contrast of the image.

Sharpen To reduce in colour strength, as when halftone dots become smaller; opposite of “thicken” or “dot spread”

Small Caps Capital letters that are about the same height as the tvpeface’s x-height. Some software programs automatically create their own small caps, but true small caps are often only found in expert typefaces.

T

Template Refers to a printing project’s basic details in concerto its dimensions. A general layout.

Text Wrap A term used in page layout software, specifically to the way text can be shaped around the edges of images.

Thumbnail A thumbnail is a reduced-size version of the original image.

TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) A graphic file format used for storing images . TIFF is a commonly used file format for high colour depth images.

Tint When a colour is made lighter by adding white.

Tolerance Tolerance is the range of pixels a tool in graphic software functions in. Or the range of shade or colour pixels a Magic Wand selects, etc.

True colour System A true colour system is a 24-plane graphics sub-system which composes the entire range of 16.7 million colours.

Typeface A typeface consists of a series of fonts and a full range of characters, such as numbers, letters, marks and punctuation.

U

Unsharp Mask A method used to heighten the sharpness or focus of images by selecting and increasing the contrast of pixels alongside the edges of images.

Uppercase Also known as capital letters, they are the larger characters in a typeface.

UV Coating A glossy coating applied to the paper surface and dried using ultraviolet light. It is glossy and adds a certain level of protection to the printed material.

V

Value This refers to the degree of lightness or darkness of a colour.

Varnish This is a liquid coating applied to a surface for protection and for a glossy effect.

Vector Graphic Vector graphics allows the designer to expand or reduce the vector graphic in size without any loss in quality using curves, points, lines and polygons.

W

Watermark Translucent design impressed on paper created during manufacture, it is visible when held to light.

Weight The range of a stroke’s width. Also knows as demibold, light, and bold. Some typeface families have many weights like ultra-bold and extra-light. Associated to the heaviness of the stroke for a specific font, such as Light, Regular, Book, Demi, Heavy, Black, and Extra Bold.

White Point Is one of a handful of reference illuminants used in colourimetry which is used to define the colour “white”. Based on the application, different definitions of white are needed to give sufficient results.

White Point Adjustment A white point adjustment establishes the amount of highlighted detail in an image.

Widow Line A single line of a paragraph at the bottom of a page or column.

WYSIWYG What You See Is What You Get. This is an approximate screen representation of what the final printed image will look like.

X

X-Height This is the height of the lowercase letters that do not have ascenders or decenders, such as a, c, e and mm.

Y

Yellow One of the subtractive primary colours of CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) that is used in four-colour process inks.

Z

Zoom Most design software lets you zoom in or out on an image to get a closer or farther away look. Zooming in is especially useful when photo retouching or working on tiny details.