Fine Print Knowledge Center
The online guide to print and design.
- Pictorial Paper Cover
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An Illustration printed on a paperback cover.
This decorative practice began in the early 1850s, with the publication of Letters Left at the Pastry-Cook’s by J.S. Mayhew, and was the precursor of the next trend in publishing yellowbacks.
The sensational pictorial paper cover novels of the later 19th and 20th centuries are famous for their lurid, colorful covers.
Also known as illustrated wraps
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- Piece Rate
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- Piggyback Labels
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A label that has two label layers and a liner.
The top label has adhesive on the back, the second label has a release coating on the front (to allow the top label to be pulled off) and adhesive on the back.
When it is pulled off the liner and blown on to the form, the adhesive on the back of the second label is what holds the label onto the form.
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- Pigment
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The chemical composition or particles that are mixed into printing inks in order to create ink body, color and opacity.
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- Pigment Color
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A coloring element that is formed when white light strikes an object that reflects part of the spectrum while absorbing other regions and the remitted light has a different spectral distribution than the original light.
Pigment colors are non-luminous, and can only be created through absorption or reflection of light.
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- Pin Register
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A system using a series of pins used to maintain registration from prepress to press.
It is used to register film to film, film to plates, and plates to press.
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- Pinfeed Holes
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Evenly spaced holes that are punched into the left and right margins of a continuous form, used at the collator to guide the paper through and align each part.
They are also used to guide the form through a continuous printer.
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- PING
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Packet InterNet Groper
Software that permits a user to determine whether other machines are online and available.
Pinging is performed by sending an ICMP echo request and waiting for a reply.
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- Pinholes
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Tiny holes in a printed area that did not get covered by ink.
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- Pirate Edition
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An unauthorized edition of a book that is usually sold abroad without payment to the author.
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- Pitch
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A measure used to determine the number proportional type characters that can be placed within an inch.
If the type is designated as 8 pitch there are 8 characters per inch.
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- Pixel
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The smallest unit of a digitized image created by a digital device, such as a computer, camera, or scanner. Pixel is short for “picture element”.
The more pixels per inch the better the resolution. On computer monitors, the display is divided into rows and columns containing thousands or millions of pixels.
Each pixel is composed of three dots representing the three color channels of red, green, and blue light that are necessary for creating a color image on computer monitors and television screens.
Because of their small size, the pixels appear to merge, simulating a continuous tone image, but when magnified they appear to be tiny square blocks of light, as shown in the illustration below.
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- Pixel Format
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A format for storing image data in which, for a given resolution every pixel in the image is represented by the corresponding data.
Image processing programs such as Photoshop use the pixel format, the most common being TIFF (Tagged Image File Format).
The pixel format is most suitable for real images, but, depending on the quality of the image, it requires large amounts of memory.
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- Pixel Graphic
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A graphic or image represented as a matrix of picture elements or pixels.
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- Pixel Swapping
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An image editing technique where pixels from one area of an image replace the pixels in another area.
By using this technique touch ups can be done to the image to change its appearance.
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- Pixelization
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A noticeable display of the pixels forming jagged edges which occurs as the image is enlarged and the square pixels become most noticeable on lines or curves.
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- Pixels Per Inch
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The number of pixels per inch displayed across or down a monitor.
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- Pixels Per Square Inch
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Ppi
Specifies the resolution of an image, as it appears on a monitor.
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- PJTF
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Portable Job Ticket Format
A PDF digital job ticket developed by Adobe.
It contains commerce information, such as job number, customer, customer address and quotes, the prepress data, such as trapping, color management and preflight and the variables that control those processes.
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- PKZIP
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Phil Katz’s ZIP Program
An archiving tool originally written by the late Phil Katz, and marketed by his company PKWARE, Inc.
The first version of PKZIP appeared in 1989.
It was a DOS command-line tool and was distributed as shareware with a $25 registration fee.
PKZIP 1 used three different compression algorithms, colourfully referred to as “shrinking”, “reducing” and “imploding” which were chosen based on the characteristics of the file being compressed.
Although popular at the time, files in PKZIP 1 format are now rare, and many modern unzip tools are unable to handle “shrinking” and “reducing”, although “imploding” is usually supported.
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- Plain Text
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Textual data in the ASCII format that is not encrypted.
Most portable format used because it is supported by almost every application on every machine.
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- Planographic
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The process to print impressions from a smooth surface rather than from creating incised or relief areas on the plate. The term was devised to describe lithography.
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- Plastic Comb Binding
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A binding method that uses a plastic comb type material, inserted through prepunched holes in a stack of paper, to bind the sheets together.
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- Plastic Wrapping
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A method of wrapping packages or products with a plastic film and then applying heat so that the wrap fits tight to the product.
Plastic wrapping is used to package a product in specific quantities and is also used for protection purposes.
It also adds some stability to the product when storing.
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- Plate
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1. A metal or paper light-sensitive sheet that holds an image that has been photographically produced.
During the printing process, the image area picks up ink, which is then transferred to a blanket and then to paper.
2. A full-page book illustration that is separate from the text pages.
Technically, illustrations that are printed on text pages are called cuts. However, the term “plate” is often used to describe both types of book illustrations.
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- Plate Characteristics
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A representation of data and factors required for digital platesetters to control the output quality during production and defined using a control wedge.
These characteristics must be checked regularly.
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- Plate Cylinder
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- Platemaking
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A prepress process where a “flat” (masking sheet with negative stripped into it) is laid on a plate, the plate is exposed and then processed.
The plate is then ready to be taken out to the press.
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- Platen
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That part of the press on which you put your card or paper to be printed
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- Platen Press
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A type of relief press, where during the printing process, grippers move a sheet of paper from the feedboard to the platen, which is the surface where the print impression is made.
A set of rollers applies ink to the type in a chase on the press bed. The press bed and the platen are pressed together like a clamshell which produces the image on the paper.
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