Printing Terms Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X-Y-Z
Tab Alignment: An electronic function for alignment of text on tab stops; alignment can be left, right, centered or decimal.
Tack: In printing inks, the property of cohesion between particles; the pulling power or separation force of ink in its transfer from a press blanket to its intended printing surface. A tacky ink has high separation forces and can cause surface picking or splitting of weak papers. A lack of tack has very little ability to transfer properly from blanket to paper because it has a low adhesion tendency, this effects trap.
Task: An open application.
Task Switching: A feature offered by some disk operating systems (such as Multifinder on the Macintosh) allowing the user to copy two or more programs into computer memory at the same time, so that the user can switch quickly from one program to another. Note that this is not the same as multitasking, in which programs not only reside in memory simultaneously but may be used simultaneously.
Tb: Abbreviation for Terabyte, equal to approximately one billion kilobytes and often used to measure optical disk storage capacity.
Template: A dummy publication that acts as a model for the structure and general layout of another publication.
Text File: A file containing only letters, digits and symbols. A text file usually consists of characters coded from the ASCII character set.
Three Quarter Tones: A neutral gray area on a reproduction scale located between the middletones and the shadow.
Thumbnail: A miniature copy of a page.
TIFF: Tag Image File Format. A document format developed by Aldus, Microsoft and leading scanner vendors as a standard for bitmapped graphics, including scanned images.
Tiling: Reproducing oversize artwork or documents by breaking the image area into parts (called tiles). Adjacent tiles repeat a small portion of the image, and they may contain crop marks as well. The repeated portion of the image (the overlap) and the crop marks aid in reconstructing the overall image from the tiles.
Tints: Various even tones (strengths) of a solid color. Created by the use of photomechanical tints usually available in percentages of 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 and 95% screen tints from various manufacturers. Sometimes referred to as Bendays.
Tissue Overlay: A thin, translucent paper placed over artwork (mostly mechanical) for protection; used to indicate color breaks, position of halftones and color separations and areas on color originals which need color correction.
Tonal Merge: In photography, colors, textures, shapes, and details which are recorded and compressed in a shadow area which merge and record as shadows. If these details are important they should have enough light placed upon them so they render as middletones and not shadows. In color separations, similar colors, tones and areas which when separated, reproduce as like tones, especially in shadow areas where there are little or no tonal differences. If the details which already have tonal merges are necessary in the final reproduction, it is highly recommended to go back and re-photograph or go to the added expense of overprinting a 5th color. (See Overprinting.)
Tone Reproduction: The contrast of an original must adjust during color reproduction to conform to the ranges of the halftone screens from 1% to 100%. It is virtually impossible to print densities more than 100% and tones less than 2 or 3% will have no detail. This is one of the most difficult limitations of the printing process to understand or accept.
Toner: A dry ink powder which has been electrically charged. Used in printers, fax machines and copiers. Generally, the image is translated into bit mapped charges of the opposite polarity on a special drum in the printer. The toner is attracted to the charged areas, where it is transferred to paper. The toner is then "set", usually by heat.
Track Kerning: A method of uniformly increasing or decreasing the amount of letter and word spacing over a range of text, depending upon the specific font and size.
Tracking: Adjusting the letterspacing uniformly throughout a selected portion of text. See kerning.
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP): A connection-based protocol, responsible for breaking data into packets, which the IP protocol sends over the network. This protocol provides a reliable, sequenced communication stream of internetwork communication.
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP): The primary wide area network used on the world-wide Internet, which is a world-wide internetwork of universities, reseach labs, organizations, and corporations. TCP/IP includes standards for how computers communicate and conventions for connecting networks and routing traffic, as well as specifications for utilities.
Transparency: A film-based positive image that is viewed and reproduced through transmitted light.
Transparent Copy: In photography, illustrative copy such as a color transparency, through which light must pass in order for it to be seen or reproduced. Transparencies generally produce better than reflective art (color prints) because they contain a larger tonal range and more overall density.
Trapping: The ability to print wet ink film over previously printed ink. Wet trapping is dependent upon several press and paper conditions including hardness and holdout of the paper, tack of the inks, and general condition of the rollers, cylinders and blankets on the press. Dry trapping is printing wet ink over dry ink. Improper trapping will cause color changes.
Trichromatic: The technical name for RGB representation of color, i.e., using red , green and blue to create all the colors in the spectrum.
Trim Marks: Guides that show where a document will be cut to fit the specifications of a final printed product.
Tritone: An image reproduced using three colors.
TRUMATCH: A color matching system which is based solely on color attributes attainable from CYMK printing as opposed to spot ink colors. Like PMS, an electronic version of the system is a feature of many color painting, drawing, and layout software products.
TrueType TM: A font format created by Microsoft and Apple Computer intended to replace Adobe Postscript fonts, mainly on lower-cost publishing systems.
TSR Software: Terminate and Stay Resident. See memory-resident software.
Tungsten Lighting: In photography, this type of electrical light source which provides specific color temperature light at a fairly even rate. The two types of illumination which are most popular are 3200 degree Kelvin and 3400 degree Kelvin. Films capable of accurately recording each of these specific areas of the spectrum are available. When used in a daylight situation, the tungsten film will record parts of the tungsten spectrum and parts of the daylight spectrum rendering unsuitable results.
Type 1 Fonts: PostScript Bezier outline format fonts with special encryption for compactness and improved quality on low-resolution output devices.
Type Style: A variation, such as bold or italic, or outline, of a font.