A
Adobe Systems Inc.
The Mountain View, California-based company that created, maintains and markets Postscript and PostScript-compatible products, including Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat and a range of Postscript fonts.
advertorial
An advertisement that is designed to look like editorial, usually with smaller headlines and photos and text set in columns.
AFAIK
Abbreviation for As Far As I Know
AFM
Abbreviation for Adobe Font Metrics
against the grain
Perpendicular to the grain direction of fibers in a sheet of paper
agate, agate line
Term used originally to designate 5-1/2 point size type. Still used by newspapers to measure display and classified advertising.
AGFA
Abbreviation for Aktiengesellschaft fur Anilinfabrikation: the Belgian/German company that manufactures prepress equipment like imagesetters and platesetters as well as consumables like film or printing plates.
AGP
Abbreviation for Accelerated Graphics Port
AI
Abbreviation for Adobe Illustrator - Popular drawing program for Macintosh and PC. The name also refers to the corresponding file format.
Aldus Corporation
The Seattle, Washington-based software company that published PageMaker software and was an influential developer of the market for desktop publishing. Aldus was bought by Adobe years ago.
algorithm
A sequence of exact instructions that define a method to solve a particular problem. For example, algorithms are used to create a digital halftone screen.
alias
A pointer file that actually represents another file. This word is only used on Macintosh computers. On Windows systems, the same pointer file is refered to as a “shortcut”.
aliasing
The appearance of jagged steps (jaggies) along object edges in computer-generated images or type. The stair casing effect is caused by sharp tonal contrasts between pixels. This effect can be very apparent in low resolution images. The picture to the left shows an example of aliasing.
Anti-aliasing is the technique that is used to minimize the staircasing effect. It softens the edges by adding extra graylevels or colors between the contrasting pixels. The example to the right demonstrates this effect.
alignment
The way text is positioned within the page margins. Text can be left justified (also called flush left) like in this sentence
or it can be centered
or it can be right justified (flush right)
Another option is to simply justify the text, which means that it aligns with both the left and right margin. This effect cannot be used on a web page so I can’t show an example.
alphabet length
Measurement, in points, of the lower case alphabet of any typeface from “a” through “z”. Aids in copyfitting and determining the relative space required for different typefaces.
alpha channel
A special channel reserved by some image-processing applications like PhotoShop for masking or retaining additional colour information.
alphanumeric
Refers to any system that combines letters and numbers. A contraction of “alphabet” and “numeric”.
Loading ...