Printing glossary

The basic material used to manufacture printed materials. Papers are essentially classified as follows: Uncoated papers: woodfree offset (white and yellow), suitable for printing on sheet and rotary presses, colour and B/W publications; volume paper (white and yellow), suitable for printing on sheet and rotary presses, only recommended for printing B/W publications; recycled paper (natural, varicoloured), suitable for printing on sheet presses

Coated papers: – single-sided coated paper (gloss or matte), suitable for printing on a sheet press for colour and B/W publications, primarily used for greeting cards where the coated side is printed in full colour and the uncoated side remains suitable for writing with a pen, etc. – double-sided coated paper (gloss or matte), suitable for printing on sheet and rotary presses for colour and B/W publications

Special papers: self-adhesive, labels, carbonless – the names of which clearly indicate their uses

Graphic coated carton and cardboard: these are multi-layer cardboards with a white top coating and various middle and bottom layers. They are suitable depending on individual levels of quality (GC1, GC2, GD2, GD3) to produce packaging (folding boxes), blister packs and general graphical processing

Bookbinding cardboard: this cardboard is primarily suited for lamination and bookbinding to produce binders, games and various advertising banners and stands. Their individual levels of quality are divided into:

– GREY-GREY

– WHITE-GREY

– WHITE-WHITE

This is the basis weight of 1 m2 of paper (from 8-149 g/m2), carton (over 150 g/m2) or cardboard (nad 230 g/m2 with a small number of layers or over 400 g/m2 with a large number of layers) expressed in g/m2.

A PDF file used to check the arrangement of text and illustrations

Continuous punching or cutting of paper or other material, which ensures trouble-free tearing off of its part (eg tear-off coupon, forms, etc.).

Marking each printed item with a special text from a database

A pixel is the smallest element of a raster display or digital image and contains information as to the intensity and colour of a shade.

Total number of printed items produced

A credible preview before printing that is used to check the arrangement of text and illustrations, and the colour scheme

Checked and approved sample sheets

Markup to identify corrections and errors (i.e. in the text)