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Printing is a very old industry and, like most industries, has its own jargon. As the end user of the service, you don’t really need to concern yourself about this stuff too much. However, especially if you’re supplying your own artwork, there are a few terms that it would be useful to know:
Bleed
Bleed is a term that refers to ink that prints all the way to the edge of a trimmed page - so if your design calls for ink to extend right to the edge of the paper (the "trim"), your ink is "bleeding" off the page and you need to build a bleed margin into your artwork.
CMYK
CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black (black is represented by the letter K for historical reasons that prevent it being confused with blue). It is the method used for creating full colour in ink for printing.
See also RGB
Resolution
As used in publishing, resolution refers to the number of dots that make up a picture, whether those dots are made of ink on paper or light on a screen. If you’ve ever bought a printer, scanner or digital camera, you’re probably familiar with the term DPI (dots per inch), which is the most common measure of resolution. All you really need to know is that Web publishing requires images to be between 75 and 96 DPI. Because the dots used in printing are much finer, the required resolution is 300 DPI. So whilst an image intended for printing can be reduced in size for Web use with no discernable degradation, the opposite is unfortunately not true.
RGB
RGB stands for Red Green Blue and is the method used to create colours on screen by mixing those three colours in varying amounts.
See also CMYK
Spot Colours
Spot colours are usually used to add a splash of colour to a print without the expense of full four colour process. Spot colours are defined as Pantone® colours and you should supply us with the appropriate Pantone® code to ensure correct colour reproduction.
Bleed
Bleed is a term that refers to ink that prints all the way to the edge of a trimmed page -
CMYK
CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black (black is represented by the letter K for historical reasons that prevent it being confused with blue). It is the method used for creating full colour in ink for printing.
See also RGB
Resolution
As used in publishing, resolution refers to the number of dots that make up a picture, whether those dots are made of ink on paper or light on a screen. If you’ve ever bought a printer, scanner or digital camera, you’re probably familiar with the term DPI (dots per inch), which is the most common measure of resolution. All you really need to know is that Web publishing requires images to be between 75 and 96 DPI. Because the dots used in printing are much finer, the required resolution is 300 DPI. So whilst an image intended for printing can be reduced in size for Web use with no discernable degradation, the opposite is unfortunately not true.
RGB
RGB stands for Red Green Blue and is the method used to create colours on screen by mixing those three colours in varying amounts.
See also CMYK
Spot Colours
Spot colours are usually used to add a splash of colour to a print without the expense of full four colour process. Spot colours are defined as Pantone® colours and you should supply us with the appropriate Pantone® code to ensure correct colour reproduction.