Glossary

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Pantone colour

The brand name of a colour matching system produced by Pantone, Inc of the USA. A large range of inks are specified and identified by number to produce standard results across the industry.

A reference such as PMS199 indicates a colour in the Pantone range, in this case a bright red. In a colour swatch book the number PMS199C would indicate how the colour looks when printed on Coated or glossy stock. PMS199U indicates how the same ink appears when printed on Uncoated or matt stock. Sometimes the difference can be quite dramatic.

It is worth remembering that Pantone inks provide a much greater range of colours than can be achieved using CMYK. This is important if trying to match work printed in four colour process with that printed in special colours.

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PDF

Invented by Adobe Systems, Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) is a publicly available specification used by standards bodies around the world for secure, reliable electronic document distribution and exchange.

As an open file format specification, PDF is available to anyone who wants to develop tools to create, view, or manage PDF documents.

Preserve the look and integrity of your original documents - Adobe PDF files look exactly like the original pages and fulfil requirements for electronic filing and document security.

Anyone can open Adobe PDF documents on any system, regardless of the software platform, the original application, or the availability of specific fonts using free Adobe Reader software.

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Postscript

This page description language is a programming language optimised for printing graphics and text. In the jargon of the day, it is a page description language.

The main purpose of PostScript was to provide a convenient language in which to describe images in a device independent manner. This device independence means that the image is described without reference to any specific device features (e.g. printer resolution) so that the same description could be used on any PostScript printer (say, a LaserWriter or a Linotron) without modification. In practice, some PostScript files do make assumptions about the target device (such as its resolution or the number of paper trays it has), but this is bad practice and limits portability.

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Pre-mastering

Process to convert the data representing audio or a CD-ROM application into the data to be stored on the CD. For PC CD-ROM’s it will involve adding the ISO 9660 file structure data. Also refers to creating a disc image for a DVD-Video, DVD-Audio or DVD-ROM title, where the file system is Micro UDF.

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