Library

This section of the site is used for information that cannot be fitted in a separate category. It covers general technology topics that relate to graphic arts or the printing industry.

Technology

Brief descriptions of some of the technologies used in graphic arts, including a simple list that converts numbers from 1 to 255 in their binary and hexadecimal equivalent as well as listing the matching ASCII characters. Why this was the most visited page on the site for a few years is completely beyond me.

Compression algorithms

The largest job I ever got was around 6 gigabyte – and even then most of the images of that magazine were compressed. The compression overview lists some of the mechanisms used to make sure I got just 2 DVDs for that job, instead of a stack of 60 CD’s (or 30000 floppies – could you imagine that )

File formats

I have probably explained what a DCS file is around a million times. I don’t want to do that any longer – hence this overview of popular file formats used in prepress. The most popular are the pages on EPS and TIFF. PostScript, PDF and JDF each have their own section in this site. My page about the difference between bitmap and vector data is also pretty popular.

Paper sizes

A4, Ledger, SRA2 & Metric Demy Octavo – what more can I say?

The history of prepress

A visual trip through the history of digital prepress, from the moment the DTP revolution started till now. Next to the shorter version, you can also enjoy a more elaborate year-by-year overview.

Fun

Jokes, stories and a cartoon.