Printing Terminology

Bleed: Extending an image beyond the trim marks to eliminate borders or margins in the finished piece.

Color Separation: Separating color artwork into separate colors, such as cyan, magenta, yellow, and black for presses.

DPI: Dots per inch. A measure of resolution for printers, scanners and displays. Laser printers typically reach 300 DPI, though 600 DPI is becoming more common. We ask for photos and graphics at 300 dpi.

Duplex or back to back: Printing an image on both sides of a sheet of paper.

Head-to-head: Printing the top of the front of the page back to back with the top of the page on the back side.

Head-to-toe: Printing the top of the front of the page back to back with the bottom of the page on the back side.

Margins: The border around the page where the printers can't print. This area is .25" on most copiers.

Original: Your typeset hard copy or digital file from which copies are produced.

Registration: Putting two or more images together so that they are exactly aligned and producing a sharp image.

Signature Booklet: The collated pages of one folded and trimmed form, making up one section of a bound book.

Collate Vs. Uncollate: Collated pages are in proper numerical order in each set. Uncollated pages are in seperate sets of each page. See example.