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

oblique
Roman typeface characters that are slanted to the right.

OCR
Abbreviation for Optical Character Recognition, system that scans text as an image and turns it into text that may be edited.

octal
A numbering system with a base of eight.

OEM
Abbreviation for Original Equipment Manufacturer

OFA
Abbreviation for Open Font Architecture: an enhancement in MacOS 8.5 to handle fonts besides the classic TrueType and PostScript type 1 fonts. Prior to MacOS 8.5, OFA was only available when QuickDraw GX was installed.

offset
Common term used for offset-lithography. Also used to refer to smudges of ink transferred from one printing sheet to another.

Old English
See blackletter

on-demand
Ongoing print fulfillment that provides quick changes and fast turnaround of regularly updated, low-inventory print materials over time. It is typically associated with a digital printing process.

opacitance
The objective measure of opacity.

opacity
The property of a paper that limits show-through from printing of opposite side or from another printing sheet.

opaque
- Material (colloidal graphite) of sufficient optical density applied to a film base to simulate solid areas.
- To apply such material.
- To paint out areas on a negative so that they will not appear as image areas on the plate.

open up
In preparing a flat, to remove mask material around an image or part of an image to permit its exposure in film contacting or platemaking

OpenType
OpenType is a recent font format that is jointly developed by Adobe and Microsoft. It resembles TrueType but can contain both TrueType and PostScript Type 1 font data. Check the font pages for more information.

OPI
Abbreviation for Open Prepress Interface (actually a pretty useless abbreviation because it doesn’t tell you anything at all about its meaning). OPI is a mechanism in which high resolution images (scans) are placed on a server, which automatically creates low-resolution versions of those images. These smaller images are referred to as lowres images, proxies or lay-files. They are between 70 to 90% smaller than the original images. It are these small images that can be placed in a page lay-out application easily and quickly. When the page is ready for final output, it is printed through a spooler on the same server computer, and the server computer automatically replaces the lowres images by their high-resolution equivalent, prior to sending the data to the output device. Apart from having a central place to store and manage images, OPI also offers the advantage of speeding up the handling and printing of images on layout systems.
optical center
A vertical point that is approximately 10% above the mathematical center of a page or layout.

orphan
The last line of a paragraph containing only one word or part of a word. Considered bad typographic technique.

orthochromatic
Refers to a film that is sensitive to two colours of light. Panchromatic film is sensitive to all colours of light.

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