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The Heidelberg website glossary explains, in alphabetical order, a multitude of terms relevant to printing, as well as some terms used in Heidelberg's product catalogue.

Simply click on the letter of your choice to access the information you need.

Pad printing: An indirect gravure process in which a flexible (often semi-spherical) pad of silicon rubber is used as a medium for transferring the ink from the plate to the surface to be printed. This method can be used to print a great diversity of irregularly shaped objects.
Page description language: A code or programming language used to specify all elements of the layout of a printed page including fonts, graphic elements and images, in such a way that an interpreter can carry out the necessary printer and control commands in an output device.
Page assembly: The positioning of the finished pages on the imposition sheet as determined using imposition software.
Page view (page impression, page request): The number of times a Web page is requested from a server. This is the preferred counting method for traffic measurement (instead of hits) because it only counts documents, not individual files. A single HTML page is counted as one page impression.
Pagination: The assigning of numbers to the pages in a document; the division of a document into pages
Pantone colors: Colors based on a system used worldwide that the Pantone print shop (New Jersey) introduced for the graphic arts industry in 1963. The system is based on 512 reference color tones which are mixed from eight basic colors, black and white and are printed on coated and uncoated paper. Today, there are over 1,100 Pantone colors available on a broad range of papers. Pantone has also published color systems for textiles, plastics, paints, film and video.
Paperboard (cover paper): A paper product with a grammage that is higher than paper, but lower than cardboard. A distinction is made between single-layer and multilayer board. In the U.S., paperboard is often called “cover paper”.
Papyrus: A durable writing material in roll, sheet or book form made from a giant sedge, Cyperus papyrus. To produce papyrus, the pith of the plant is sliced into strips that are laid out in a row with the edges slightly overlapping. Another row is then laid crosswire on top of the first. Next, the two layers are moistened with water and pounded into a sheet of writing material, smoothed and then dried. Papyrus was used as a writing material by the Egyptians since the beginning of the third century B.C. Beginning in the second century A.D. It was produced in Egypt in large quantities and transported throughout the ancient world. In time papyrus was replaced by parchment, which was in turn was replaced by paper.
Paragraph format: Layout instruction and print command that determines text alignment, margin width and spacing.
Parallel center fold: A folding technique in which the product is creased in the middle in order to halve the respective length in every pocket of the buckle folder. The page is folded in half and then folded in half again in the same direction.
Parallel cut: A cut performed by setting the saddle (material stop) parallel to the cutting line.
PARC (Palo Alto Research Center): Organization established in 1970 by the Xerox Corporation that has had a decisive influence on the development of computer technology through the present. Among other achievements, the research institute developed the graphic user interface used on Macintosh and Windows computers, the first commercially available computer mouse, Ethernet network technology, client server architecture, object-oriented programming and the laser printer.
Parchment: Specially treated animal skin for writing or printing.
PCL (printer command language): The language used to control computer printers. Introduced in the 1980s by computer manufacturers Hewlett-Packard and under constant development ever since, PCL allows application programs to control the functions of different printers in a standardized, efficient manner.
PDF (portable document format): Data format developed by Adobe Systems Inc. and used for exchanging and processing electronically stored, formatted documents with text and images, independent of hardware or software. One of the special features of the format is that texts and graphics are stored in vector form, meaning that the resolution of their representation is dependently solely on the output device (monitor, printer).
Penumbra: See "deep shadow".
Perceptual rendering: A rendering method used to preserve the visual color relationship as it is perceived by the human eye, and in which, thus, the color values themselves may change. The perception-oriented (perceptual) rendering intent reproduces the image taking into consideration paper, dynamic range and color characteristics of the output system, so that that the human eye perceives the image in the destination system (CMYK) true to the original. In color space conversions, one can choose from perceptual, absolute colorimetric and relative colorimetric. With perceptual all colors are shifted and compressed until the colors of the source color space fit into the destination color space.
Perfecting machine: Usually a sheetfed press that prints on both sides of the paper in a single run.
Periodical: Refers to a typesetting and printing job performed under a specific title on a regular basis with a similar layout.
Personalized printing: Refers to print runs in which the individual copies have distinctive imprints. A minimum requirement for personalized printing is a digital printing process, which allows printing data to vary from copy to copy.
Photocomposition: The first fundamentally new typesetting technology since the invention of letterpress printing by Johannes Gutenberg, photocomposition does not use solid forms for depicting the characters. Instead, the set text is created on photographic film. Older machines performed this function by imaging the characters with a flashlight from a negative original or from a very bright screen (cathode ray tube) onto the film. The move to computer setting is marked by the laser setter which, like the laser printer, uses a laser beam to write text, images and other design elements directly onto film or a printing plate.
Photopolymer plate: A kind of plate with a flexible base material, excellently suited for use on rotary printing presses. Photopolymer plates have widely replaced stereotype plates.
Photoshop: A software package for digital image manipulation in DTP applications designed and manufactured by Adobe.
Pica: A type size used in the Anglo-Saxon world, corresponding to 12 points.
Picking resistance (sizing strength): Refers to the amount of force necessary to separate particles from the surface of the paper as it moves vertically. Picking resistance is a key criterion for offset-printing applications.
Pigment color: A coloring element that is formed when white light strikes an object that reflects part of the spectrum while absorbing other regions and the remitted light has a different spectral distribution than the original light. Pigment colors are non-luminous, and can only be created through absorption or reflection of light.
Pixel (picture element): The smallest unit of a digitally displayed image. The memory required by an image consisting of pixels is determined by the size of the image, its resolution, the number of pixels per unit of area, and the number of colors to be displayed.
Pixel format: A format for storing image data in which, for a given resolution every pixel in the image is represented by the corresponding data. Image processing programs such as Photoshop use the pixel format, the most common being TIFF (Tagged Image File Format). The pixel format is most suitable for real images, but, depending on the quality of the image, it requires large amounts of memory.
Pixel graphic (bitmapped graphic): A graphic or image represented as a matrix of picture elements or pixels.
Plate characteristics: A representation of data and factors required for digital platesetters to control the output quality during production and defined using a control wedge. These characteristics must be checked regularly.

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