Digital Printmaking Terminology

Archival: Refers to inks and papers that will last years rather than a few weeks. Inks in small format desktop printers fade in as little as a few months. Unless the vendor guarantees the longevity of their prints even large format prints may not be long-lived.

BAT: “Bon a tirer” or good to pull or print. This is the last stage of the proofing process when the artist can elect to produce one full sized print as the final proof. This print remains the property of the printmaking studio.

CMYK cyan, magenta, yellow, black the ink colors used in most commercial four color print processes and on the IRIS printer

C.LC.M.LM.Y.K cyan, Light Cyan, Magenta, Light Magenta, Yellow, Kblack ink colors used in some inkjet printers

Continuous tone: An image which is produced in smooth solid color rather than discrete droplets. A traditional photograph is an example of a continuous tone image. Ink jet prints all show some form of dot although you may need a magnifying lens to see them.

DPI: Dots per inch. This is sometimes used interchangeably with PPI or Pixels per inch. These terms are now outmoded. In digital printmaking the printmaker has to ensure the original file contains enough information. If the resolution or dpi of the file is not sufficiently high the resultant image can be soft or pixelated (discrete squares of color can be seen). However this may be something that the artist is seeking so it is essential that the artist and printmaker communicate what is required when printing an image.

Dye-based Ink: Some printers use ink where the color is in solution. This is not as strong a concentration of color as the pure pigment and can result in a less long-lived print.

File Size: Files should be prepared at actual size,  at 150 dpi. This is the minimum. We can always scale files down if they are larger than this but generally we do not recommend enlarging files. Call for more details on file size.

Edition: The number of prints that an artist makes of a single image. In traditional printing these are usually printed at the same time. In digital printmaking the process gives the artist the freedom to print an edition over time. The artist does can spread the cost over time and only needs to order a print when it has been sold. The term edition still tends to be used for a digital print although strictly speaking they should be considered a series.

Giclée print: A term created by one of the earliest IRIS printmakers to describe IRIS prints. In ink jet printing a stream of ink under pressure is focused onto the page. Giclée is a French word for spurting of liquid. At this point the term giclée tends to be used by ink jet printmakers producing reproductions rather than original work. It is no longer exclusively used for IRIS prints.

Inkjet print: Any print produced by a wide range printers from the small Epson printers that many people have for personal use to printers which produce prints of unlimited length and many feet wide. A continuous stream of ink is broken into droplets by electrical vibration of a crystal (piezo-electric crystal technology). A variety of methods are then used to focus the droplets to form the image. Ink jet printers most commonly used by artists include, IRIS, Epson, Roland, Mutoh, Hewlett Packard and Encad although many others may be used.

IRIS: The pre-eminent ink jet printer. The printer was originally created for proofing graphic design layouts. The advantage with the printer is that it can print on anything, paper, wood, plastic and fabric. Until recently it was the only printer with a variable droplet size enabling it to produce an almost continuous tone print. Each droplet is less than the size of a human blood corpuscle and the printer produces 4 million droplets of ink per second during printing.

File Formats: EPS, JPEG, PSD, TIF are acronyms for file formats used by a variety of software programs to create digital art.
EPS files are vector-based files - the lines are determined by mathematical formulae and the files while small can be enlarged without loss of resolution. JPG files are most suitable for web applications and NOT for printing. They are often compressed resulting in loss of color information and detail.
PSD Photoshop native file format similar.
TIF raster, or dot-based,  file-types for printing. Files should not be color corrected or altered before we receive them and we generally prefer RGB rather than CMYK files.

Laser print: A printer in which powdered carbon based toner is fused to paper using heat.

Lenticular Print: This is the combination of a specially prepared print viewed through a many angled plastic sheet or lenticular screen. The image will then appear to move or look 3-Dimensional. Specialized software is required to produce the printed image.

Light Speed Print: A printer which uses a laser to produce a digital image on photographic paper. The exposure time is only a millionth of a second. The prints are glossy and photographic in nature and can be a few feet square.

Photoshop: One of the most widely used software programs for making digital images.

Painter: A software program that emulates the tools that artists use to create images

PDF: Portable Document format from Adobe systems. It's a cross platform file that can be viewed and printed on any computer with a FREE Acrobat reader (available from www.adobe.com). We can print PDF's on the Epson but not on the IRIS. Call for details.

Pigmented Ink: The color is formed by having small pieces of pigment in a liquid. Actual pigment is used so the inks are usually more archival than dye-based inks.

Plotter: A printer which uses pens or nozzles to produce lines rather than solid washes of color.

Raster: Computer files that are formed by dots.

RGB red, green, blue - the way a file is normally scanned

Vector: Computer files where the image is formed by mathematically determined lines.

Scanner: A device that can be used to digitize (convert to dots) negatives, photographs, and drawings. These dot based files can then be changed or edited in the computer. Some artists use the surface of the scanner as their composing space - scanning 3-D objects directly.

Series: A number of prints of the same image printed over time.