This glossary of printing terms was created by people working in today's printing industry and is brought to you by MirPrint.com . It has been revised and edited and we have rewritten some technical descriptions in every day language to help the non technical person. Any suggestions that you may have on how we can improve this glossary will be carefully considered. Please send your comments and any new definitions to us at MirPrint.com.

• Page

  One side of a sheet of paper. Two pages make up a leaf. Page is abbreviated p or pg. The plural, pages, is abbreviated pp, or pgs. In computing, the term page refers to a segment of a program or application. A computer system (especially one utilizing virtual memory) will subdivide ...   Read More

• Page Count

  A page count is the total number of pages that a project or publication contains. Also called the extent. ...   Read More

• Pagination

  In typography, the assembly of type into pages. Typesetting is the process of setting type; pagination is the process of putting pages together with that type and other graphic elements. ...   Read More

• Pagination

  In the book arena, the numbering of pages. ...   Read More

• Painted Sheet

  A Painted Sheet is a sheet printed with ink edge to edge, resulting in a 100% bleed off of all four sides. ...   Read More

• Panel

  A Panel is typically one page of a brochure. In finishing, a solid color of ink or foil applied to all or part of the cover of a casebound book to provide a background for additional foil stamping or die-stamping. ...   Read More

• Paper Plate

  A Paper Plate is a printing plate made of strong and durable paper, usually used for short printing runs. ...   Read More

• Parallel Fold

  Any fold made in a sheet of paper (or other substrate) which is oriented in a direction parallel to a previous fold. ...   Read More

• Parent Sheet

  This term means the original sheet from which press size sheets are cut, and any sheet larger than 11' x 17' or A3. ...   Read More

• Paste-up

  The composition of a page by assembling the disparate page elements, either manually or electronically, into a mechanical or other form of camera-ready copy. For many years, paste-up was performed manually, by means of sheets of output text and graphics which were litrerally pasted into position on a paste-up board, ...   Read More

• Pasteboard

  A Pasteboard is typically a clipboard with another piece of paper pasted to it. ...   Read More

• Perfect Bind

  Perfect binding, also known as adhesive binding, applies an adhesive to the spine of gathered pages which, when dry, keeps them securely bound. Commonly, a soft paper or paperboard cover (or paperback) is attached over the binding adhesive. Perfect bound publications have rectangular backbones. Publications bound by perfect binding include ...   Read More

• Perfecting Press

  A printing press, especially one used in offset lithography, that allows the simultaneous printing on both sides of a sheet of paper in one pass through the press. There are two basic configurations of offset perfecting presses. In a convertible perfector, special transfer cylinders between successive printing units flip the ...   Read More

• Picking

  The term picking refers to a printing problem occurring in multi-color flexographic printing in which the plates of successive colors remove bits of the first printed color, commonly caused by printing on still-wet ink. Flexographic picking can be alleviated by ensuring that the first down color has the most rapid ...   Read More

• Pixel

  Shorthand term for picture element, or the smallest point or dot on a computer monitor. Any computer display is divided into rows and columns of tiny dots, which are individual points at which the scanning electron beam has hit the phosphor-coated screen. The pixel is the smallest indivisible point of ...   Read More

• Planographic Printing

  Referring to a printing process, in particular lithography, in which the image area of the plate carrying the image to be printed is the same height (or on the same plane) as the non-image areas. Planographic printing processes use the principle of chemical repulsion between oil-based inks and water to ...   Read More

• Plate

  The basic image-carrying surface in a printing process, which can be made of a variety of substances, such as various metals (as those used in letterpress and lithography), rubber, or plastic (such as those used in flexography). The image areas of a printing plate may either be raised above the ...   Read More

• Platemaker

  In quick printing, a process camera that makes plates automatically from mechanicals. In commercial lithography, a machine with a vacuum frame used to expose plates through film. ...   Read More

• Pleasing Color

  Pleasing Color is defined as color that the customer considers to be satisfactory, even though it may not precisely match the original sample. ...   Read More

• Portrait

  A page format in which the correct reading or viewing orientation is vertical; the height of the page is greater than its width. ...   Read More

• Post Bind

  A Post Binder is used in loose-leaf binding which uses metal (or plastic) posts inserted through punched or drilled holes in the pages to hold sheets together, in contrast to a ring binder which uses metal rings to bind pages together. An advantage of post binders is the ability of ...   Read More

• Prepress

  Generally speaking, the term prepress includes all the steps required to transform an original into a state that is ready for reproduction by printing. Prepress includes the following steps: art and copy preparation (including typesetting), graphic arts photography (i.e., shooting negatives), image assembly and imposition (stripping), and platemaking. Depending on ...   Read More

• Preprint

  Preprint papers are mostly offset papers pre-printed in the printshop (e.g. with company logo), which are then processed further by the end-user on office printing equipment. Preprint paper is manufactured drier than standard offset paper to ensure that it does not lose its original flatness when it is processed on ...   Read More

• Press Check

  A Press Check is an opportunity for the designer to review the proof before it goes out to be printed, particularly to check for color and production quality. ...   Read More

• Press Proof

  A color proof, typically prepared photographically or digitally, by exposing a negative or positive to light sensitive materials, or generating color output from a computer, respectively, designed to simulate the appearance a printed piece. ...   Read More