This dictionary covers design, prepress and printing topics.
It was created with the help of S. Schwartz.

A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P-Q-R-S-T-U-V-W-X-Y-Z

nanometer
A measurement of a wavelength of a light beam, which is abbreviated nm. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter. The wavelengths of various lights in the visible spectrum are as follows: blue light = 400 to 500 nm, green light = 500 to 600 nm, red light = 600 to 700 nm.

NAS
Abbreviation for Network Attached Storage: harddisks linked to a network and acting as a fileserver

native file
The file that was originally used to create a document

NDS
abbreviation for Netware Directory Service

negative
A photographic image (usually on a film base) with tonal values (image densities) the reverse of those of the printed image.

network
A collection of computers that are interconnected.

NewsML
A content wrapper for news items including NITF, photos and other graphic materials. It provides metadata information about the contained news items, along with information about how the items are related. NewsML is media agnostic. It has been widely adopted globally.

Newton’s rings
Irregularly shaped patterns, similar to oil on the surface of water, that appear in scans made from transparencies. These artefacts are caused by the varying amounts of air between the scanning cylinder (or plate) and transparency surfaces as they come into contact. The effect can be avoided by applying oil between the two surfaces. Some scanner manufacturers also use special grainy glass plates to minimize the risk of creating Newton’s rings.

NeXT
The company founded by Steve Jobs in 1998 after leaving Apple. Until 2003 NeXT developed, manufactured and sold high-end workstations such as the Nextcube.

NeXT computers and the NeXTSTEP operating system had a big impact on the industry. The World’s first web server ran a NeXT system. Heidelberg’s SignaStation imposition software and OneVisions applications made their debut on this platform, making optimum use of its support for Display Postscript.

NFS
Abbreviation for Network File System

NIC
Abbreviation for Network Interface Card

NITF
Abbreviation for News Industry Text Format, an industry standard that handles the content and metadata for news stories. SportsML is a related standard for specialized content in sports. NITF has been widely adopted globally.

NORM
Abbreviation for Normalize Once, Output Many, a prepress workflow that uses Acrobat Distiller or a comparable product to normalize PostScript files into PDFs so that they can be output to a variety of devices at different resolutions and in different color spaces.

NT
Abbreviation for New Technology

NTFS
Abbreviation for NT File System

NTSC
Abbreviation for National Television Standards Committee: organization governing the standard for televison and video playback in the US. Their standard itself is also called NTSC, sometimes jokingly reffered to as ‘Never the Same Color’

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