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This dictionary covers graphic design, prepress and print terminology.
Stan Schwartz supplied most of the terms of this online glossary.

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OBC

Abbreviation for Outside Back Cover.

oblique

Roman typeface characters that are slanted to the right.

oblong

Books, catalogs,… that are bound on their shorter side; also referred to as album bound.

obverse

The odd-numbered page on the right-hand side of a bound publication such as a book or magazine. It is usually referred to as the front or recto. The page to the left-hand is called the reverse or verso. The term obverse is more frequently used for coins and medals to refer to the side that bears the main design and date.

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.

OFC

Abbreviation for Outside Front Cover.

offprint

Arun-on or reprint of an article first published in a magazine or journal.

offset

- Common term used for offset-lithography. The most commonly used printing method, whereby the printed material does not receive the ink directly from the printing plate but from an intermediary cylinder called a blanket which receives the ink from the plate and transfers it to the paper.
- Smudges of ink transferred from one printing sheet to another.

offset gravure

A complex offset process involving multiple transfers between the gravure plate, the plate cylinder and a solid rubber plate.

offset paper

Uncoated book paper.

OK sheet

The final color inking sheet that is signed off by the customer before the production run starts.

Old English

See blackletter

Old style numeral

Oldstyle figures are also known as non-lining numerals. These are numerals that do not all line up on the baseline as do regular, or lining, numerals.

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.

onion skin

A light bond paper used for typing and used with carbon paper because of its thinness.

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.

opaque ink

Ink that completely covers any ink under itself.

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 this page 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

A line of type on its own at the top or bottom of a page, such as for instance the first line of a paragraph set as the last line of a page. The presence of orphans is considered bad typographic technique.

orthochromatic

Any light sensitive surfaces (such as film) that are not sensitive to red light. Panchromatic film is sensitive to all colors of light.

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