If you ever find yourself wondering what all this stuff means, don't feel alone. People in the printing industry have a very specific language, and it helps to know what they're talking about. Here's a few of the terms you'll encounter, but if there's anything we say that you don't understand, ask. We'll be happy to teach you a little inside lingo.

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Blind Embossing - A printing process which utilizes a metal die in the shape of a logo or other artwork to create a raised impression on a piece of paper, without the use of any color.

.BMP - The proper three-character file extension for a bitmap image or graphic, most often used on Windows-based PCs.

CMYK - (C) Cyan, (M) Magenta, (Y) Yellow, (K) Black. The four colors used by conventional offset printing presses to create images that, to thenaked eye, appear to be full color. The printing process itself is referred to as four-color process.

Die Cutting - A printing process using a sharp, metal die to cut irregular shapes out of paper or vinyl.

.EPS - (Encapsulated Postscript) The proper three-character file extension for vector artwork (mathematical artwork comprised of a series of points and the curves between them), commonly used on Apple Macintosh computers. Files of this type can be enlarged or reduced with no loss of quality.

Foil Stamping - A printing process for hot stamping a graphic or logo using colored, metallic foil with pressure from a heated metal die.

Four-Color Process - The printing process by which small, semin-transparent dots of the four standard "process" colors (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) are printed to simulate full color.

.GIF - (Graphic Interchange Format) - A standard image compression scheme best used to compress letterforms, cartoons, and large areas of flat color, commonly for use on the Web.

Grayscale - Images that are represented using tints of black only.

Halftone - An illustration reproduced by breaking down the original tone into a pattern of dots of varying size. Light areas have small dots and darker areas or shadows have larger dots.

.JPG - (JPEG) A standardized image compression mechanism designed for compressing either full-color or grayscale photographic images, often for use on the Web. JPG is "lossy," meaning that the decompressed image is not quite of the same quality as the original image.

Keyline - A straight, linear element of variable length, having a uniform thickness.

Kiss-cut - A die-cutting process utilizing a metal die to cut irregular shapes out of the adhesive layer of a decal, but not the backing.

Offset Printing - (Also known as offset lithography) A printing method whereby the image to be printed is transferred from a photographically-prepared metal plate onto a rubber-covered cylinder, then onto paper.

Pantone® Matching System - (PMS) The printing industry standard color matching system. Ink colors are referred to by a common set of three- or four-digit numbers to ensure color accuracy from one printer to the next.

.PDF - (Portable Document Format) The proper three character file extension for an Adobe® Acrobat file. A .pdf file accurately depicts an uneditable version of virtually any electronic document, just as if it were being viewed within the software used to originally create it. Adobe Acrobat Reader software must be installed the PC being used to view .pdf files.

Sans Serif Font - A typeface having no serifs (small strokes at the end of the main strokes of each character).

Spot Colors - Printing inks which are pre-mixed to match defined industry-standard systems like Pantone.

Screen Printing - (Silk screen printing) A printing process by which ink is applied to a surface by forcing it through a fine mesh screen made of silk or a synthetic substitute.

Serif Font - A typeface having small strokes at the end of the main strokes of each character.

.WMF - (Windows Metafile) The proper three-character file extension for vector artwork (mathematical artwork comprised of a series of points and thecurves between them), used on Windows-based computers. Files of this type can be enlarged or reduced with no loss of quality.