What's in a word? Paper/Printing Glossary

[teddillard]

I don't know if it's just the way my brain works, but I think in most discussions, especially technical digital discussions, a lot of the confusion and frustration comes from an unclear understanding of the terms we're using.  For example, metamerism.  (What bad printers actually show is metameric failure- metamerism is an essential property of color that makes us able to see color in the first place...)

So I love me my words.  And I stumbled on Ron Martinsen's blog recently (I can't remember where, forgive me if it was on this forum!) and saw this awesome glossary of terms he's put together.  Here's the linky: http://www.ronmartblog.com/2010/07/epson-printing-series-danos-dictionary.html

However, there were some terms he was missing- (OCD is such an ugly term...) and it sent me to an old resource I found a while ago- the Legion Paper Glossary of printing and paper terms, as well as general digital imaging terms.  I posted the terms Ron missed here: http://www.parrotcolor.com/store/blog/?p=283

The Legion Paper resource page is here: http://www.legionpaper.com/Catalog.htm

[Geoff Wittig]

That's a great link; thanks much.
Those of us who make photographic prints with inkjets are often ignorant of the extremely broad and deep history of printing. Personally I love letterpress text printing, and collect finely printed books from the golden age of small press fine art book printing, circa 1895 to 1940.

The best resource on the subject of photographic printing technology is Richard Benson's fantastic book, The Printed Picture (Museum of Modern Art, 2008). It'll teach you anything you want to know about collotypes, Woodburytypes, web offset printing, photogravure....whatever. It's a must for anyone remotely interested in how the tools we use came to be.

[teddillard]

Thanks!  That's a great reference, I've seen it but neglected getting it, thanks for the reminder. 

I started out in both the photo and the printmaking worlds- in college I still was exploring (stone) lithography, mezzotint and serigraphs primarily, then started heavby into commercial photography when I graduated.  One of the things I've loved about inkjet has been the look and feel of ink on paper- once again.  I've also been really fascinated by the work of various artists doing fusion of digital and traditional printmaking.  I had a great student in a recent class at Northeastern who developed a wonderful mix of digital photography, scanned woodblock prints and woodblock overprinting- great stuff! 

One of the people who's done a ton of the fusion work is Dorothy Simpson Kraus- http://www.dotkrause.com/  She's good friends with Parrot Digigraphic- we're trying to put together a little workshop with her- stay tuned!