A Glossary of Graphic Design and Printing Terms

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Color Separation: The process of separating many colors into four process colors or the process of separating spot ink colors into separate plates for printing by a traditional lithograph press.

Ghost: Tinting or screening an image in order to mute the color of the image. A ghosted image appears more like a watermark.

Knockout: When an image is reversed out of a background color.

Overprint: Black ink often overprints other colors without a noticeable color shift.

Pantone Matching System: The color system used most often in the US by commercial printers to mix and match ink colors.

Perfect Bound: A bindery finishing process where the text pages of a book are sewn together and a cover is wrapped around the pages and attached with glue.

Process Color: The printing process that uses just four colors to simulate many colors. The four process colors are cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK).

Registration: The process of making colors fit together properly. If a printed piece is "out of registration" you may see a double image or white gaps between colors.

Registration Marks: Small bulls eye-shaped targets, used to "check registration." When the bulls eye marks overlay each other the project being printed is "in register."

Saddle Stitch: A bindery finishing process where a printed item is bound together by one or more staples along a folded spine.

Spot Color: A single ink color

Tint: The process of diffusing a color into small dots in order to vary the shade of the color. Therefore, you can obtain more the appearance of more than one color on a printed piece without the cost of printing another color.

Trap: Overlapping of ink colors to allow for slight variances in the printing process.

Varnish: A protective coating that is applied on press just like another ink color that coats and protects the printed image. The finish can be dull or glossy.

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