Dandy Roll:

Wire cylinder used in papermaking process to create effects such as laid, as well as watermarks.

Dead-Fold:

A characteristic that can be folded, moulded, crimped, and formed with ease. A thick layer of adhesive may act as a "hinge" to permit stiff foil-laminated stock to retain good dead-fold. In this case, the adhesive material itself must have good dead-fold and its effectiveness depends upon its thickness.

Deckle Edge:

Produced in hand-papermaking by drainage under a wooden frame surrounding the hand mould. The rough edges on hand-made and some machine-made papers were originally considered an imperfection. The deckle edge came back in fashion with the handcraft revival in the last decade of the 19th century.

Deep Etch:

A halftone in which the background has been removed to isolate or silhouette an image.

Densitometer:

Measures electronically the weight of colour of a printed sheet or a transparency to determine consistency throughout a print run. See also Density Range.

Density:

The degree of colour or darkness of an image or photograph.

Density Range:

Refers to the amount of light passed by the film emulsion in a transparency and measured by a densitometer. This can be from 0.4 in the highlight to 3.0 in the shadows although the printing process cannot reproduce such a range.

Depth:

Measurement of form from top to bottom; usually stated in inches. Form depth may be less than the fold depth, usually an equal division of it.

Descender:

The portion of characters such as 'j' or 'g' that drops below the base line.

Desensitize:

To add a chemical over NCR paper so that the area covered does not image through.

Design:

The preliminary process where the designer conceives the layout, colour, content, etc of the project from a brief.

Desktop Publishing:

The process of designing printed documents (brochures, newsletters, magazines, books, etc) often using a page layout program on a personal computer.

Destruct Bond:

A strong bond of two materials where if one attempts to pull the two apart a destruction of one of the materials will occur. The bonding agent is stronger than the materials bonded together.

Device:

Another word for hardware.

Diazo:

A light sensitive coating used on printing plates.

Die:

1. Metal rule or imaged block used to cut or place an image on paper in the finishing process.

2. A sharp metal rule used for die cutting. Also a block of metal used for embossing or foil stamping.

3. A hardened steel engraving stamp used to print an inked image. Used in the production of good quality letter headings.

Die Cut/ting:

The process of using sharp steel rules to cut special
shapes for labels, boxes or containers from printed
sheets.

DIF -Data Interchange Format:

A standard file format or database (and sometimes spreadsheets). It preserves field names and data but not formulas or text formatting.

Digital:

Information represented by numbers (digits) -the opposite of analogue, which describes information represented along continuous range, where there are an infinite number of possible values. A photograph is in analogue form, a scanned version of the same image stored within a computer is digital.

Digital B&W Printing:

Digital output directly to a production B&W printing device. Differs from regular printing where an original document is output on a regular printer (laser or dot-matrix) and then put on the copier or press for reproduction.

Digital Colour Printing:

Digital output directly to a production colour output device via a RIP device. Differs from regular printing where an original document is output on a regular printer (laser or dot-matrix) and then put on the copier or press for reproduction.

Digital Papers:

Papers designed for the specific processes of the emerging digital printing technologies. Unlike traditional offset printing, the digital environment is centered in quick turnarounds, short runs, and the ability to vary printed information within the run.

Digital Printing:

Printing in which an image is applied to paper or another substrate directly from a digital file rather than using film and/or plates. Benefits are for short runs or personalized print. Read more...

Digital Proofs (Digital Cromalin):

A cromalin type proof produced directly from disc without the aid of film. Has become a widely used term even though not all digital proofs are made by DuPont.

Digitization:

The conversion of a continuous tone image by a scanner into binary, digital data. The data stored on a magnetic medium, is processed by a computer which reproduces the image on the screen in the form of pixels. The image is subsequently transmitted to an output device, e.g., a printer, which generates a halftone from the data. Laser printers reproduce the image on paper: output scanners or image-setters on photographic media (film or paper). Reproducing a black and white photograph in two inks, usually black plus another colour. Two films are produced by different screening parameters: one film stresses the shadows of the picture, the other the details in the bright areas. Superposition of the two screen films during printing improves the reproduction of the tonal values. A grey ink may be used in addition to black in order to retain the black and white character of the picture. Selecting another colour will add a certain colour tone to the image. This process must not be confused with two-colour printing, where colour separations are produced from a colour original by means of filtering

Discrete Element:

A discrete element is not connected to other elements, such a text, graphics or images.

Document:

The file that you create and modify with an application.

DOS:

Short for Disk Operating System. DOS was the original operating systems used by most computers containing Intel (and compatible) processors. It was the precursor to the Microsoft Windows operating system that is in common use today.

Dot:

An element of halftones. Using a loupe you will see that printed pictures are made many dots.

Dot Gain:

Phenomenon of halftone dots printing larger on paper than they are on films or plates, reducing detail and lowering contrast on the final printed piece. This is primarily due to the fact that ink has a tendency to bleed when it hits paper. The type of ink and paper can affect the amount of dot gain dramatically. Newsprint suffers from heavy dot gain due to the coarseness of the paper fibre.

Dot Gain or Spread:

Dots printing larger on paper than they appear on negatives.

Dot-matrix Printer:

An impact printer that forms images from a pattern of dots, which are created by an array of pins striking an inked ribbon against the paper.

Double Burn:

Exposing a plate to multiple images.

Down Perf (Linear Perforation):

A perforation that runs vertically down the full length a form.

DPI -Dots Per Inch:

Referring to the output resolution of a device like a laser printer, ink jet printer or imagesetter. Devices can range from low resolution (300 dpi laser printer) to very high resolution (2400 - 4000 dpi imagesetter). Currently graphics screens reproduce 60 to 100dpi, most page printers work at 300dpi and typesetting systems operate at 1,000dpi and above. Generally, the higher the resolution the higher the quality of the output.

Draw Down:

A thin coating applied and spread by a number of instruments, hand rollers or pulling a smooth flat knife blade. Used to check such coating characteristics as shade, colour strength and tones.

Drawing Program:

A drawing program (which is very different from a Paint program) creates objects (lines, circles, squares etc) by using mathematical formulae (rather than an array of coloured dots (or pixels) on the screen, as in a Paint program). Each object you draw is a separate entity -you can go back and change the object's size, the line thickness, the colour, the shape; you can move it around, delete it, position it back or in front of another object and then change that position, etc. Because the objects are constructed by formulae rather than by turning on/off certain pixels, the image will print at the maximum resolution of your output device -it will output at 300 dpi on a 300 dpi laser writer and 1270 on an image-writer. A bitmapped -or paint -image, on the other hand, will always print at the resolution in which it was created. If you enlarge or reduce the bitmapped image, it will become distorted.

Drilling:

Drilling of holes in folded sections, trimmed or untrimmed, or in finished books, which will permit insertion over rings or posts in a binder.

Driver:

A piece of software that tells the computer how to interact with a device, such as a printer, hard disk, CD-ROM drive or scanner. For instance, you can't print unless you have a printer driver installed. Once these have been installed, they usually require no intervention by the user.

Drop-Out:

Portions of artwork that do not print.

Drop Shadows:

An effect where a shadow -usually made up of a percentage of the type colour -is placed behind the type for effect.

Drying:

The process of drying the printing inks so that the do not rub off or run. There are several methods of accelerated drying e.g. infra red and ultra violet.

Dummy:

A mock up of the final article made up of the correct number of pages and the paper to be used to show the thickness and the binding style. Designers dummy would show the appropriate graphics of the final or suggested job, but may be a scaled down version and would rarely be on the final stock. A printer's dummy would be a replica of the finished piece, marked with colour breaks and folds, made with the paper selected for the job.

Duotone:

A halftone image with an additional colour produced by making an additional plate. Two colour halftone reproduction from black and white original.

Duplex:

When both sides of paper are copied/printed in one pass.

Duplicate:

A copy of a transparency.

Dwell Time:

The time usually expression in seconds at a given temperature required for the application of hat to seal a heat sealing membrane.

Dye Sublimation:

The ink converts from solid to vapour back to solid on polyester impregnated paper or film.

Dyeline:

Proof made from stripped-up negatives or positives, used as a final proof to check position of image elements, folding, colour breaks, etc. All colours are indicated by different shades of blue. Also known as a blueprint.

Dylux:

Photographic paper made by DuPont and used for blue lines.