Common Printing Terms

White Exposure: Most printing papers are white. During printing or plate-making, if the colored areas that should be connected fail to align tightly, the white paper base color is exposed.

Dodging : A photographic platemaking process from the screen era. To remedy underexposure in the dark areas of a screened image, the original can be flashed once by moving it, or a piece of paper can be placed to supplement exposure, or a flash light can be directly used to increase the dark-area screen of the original and soften the image.

Silver Grain Expansion : Excessive silver grains on film (similar to "overeating") cause light to spread. Manual plate overlaying even involves exposing the film through a transparent thick film to expand the image.

Color Trapping : In color separation platemaking, the color 交接 (junction) areas are intentionally expanded to reduce the impact of misregistration.

Solid Area : Refers to a color block without screen dots, usually meaning a full-page area.

Reverse White : Text or lines printed in negative (relief) form, exposing the paper's white color.

Moiré : In amplitude modulation screening, if the screen angles are incorrectly assigned, or if the angle between each screen is less than 25°, moiré patterns become obvious.

Flashing : A screening process in lens platemaking. After normal exposure, the screen is removed, and a short additional exposure is applied to increase contrast.

Jaggies : Like a dog's jagged teeth. When an image has insufficient pixels, its edges appear "jagged" after enlargement.

Rosette Pattern : A screen pattern resembling a fallow deer's spots. Poorer ones are called "mat patterns," and worse ones are moiré.

Flush Left : A layout instruction aligning text to the left margin. Extended to plate-making and binding, it refers to using the top of the plate as the reference.

Mask : A masking sheet used in manual color separation, made by exposing film or cutting red film, for background removal or color correction.

Self-Reverse : A plate-saving printing method. After printing one side of the paper, it is flipped horizontally and vertically (called "bottom-self-reverse plate") or flipped with the tail as the gripper (called "gripper-reverse tail"). The plate remains unchanged for printing the back.

Register Pin : The guide edge of a printed sheet. As papers vary in length, register pins align them for color registration and cutting.

Impressions : A term from the lithography era for print quantity. One color impression on paper is called one "stone."

Assistant Printer : Not referring to "second-hand goods," but to the press assistant, also called a "press operator."

Proofing : Pre-printing a sample through a proofing machine to simulate the final print.

Bleed : In printing and binding, the requirement for background colors or images to extend 3mm beyond the trim line, called "bleed."

Trimming : "飞" (fēi) means to cut or remove. Trimming refers to cutting the bleed area, a binding term.