ABSTRACT
A 20th century style of painting in which non- lines, colors, shapes, and forms replace accurate visual depiction of objects such as thoughts, emotions, and time are often expressed in abstract art form.

ACID - FREE CORRUGATED CARDBOARD
Corrugated board that has been rendered acid-free; may be ligin free and /or buffered to raise the pH to 7 or above alkaline. Used for a backing board or for making sturdy storage containers for paper art, textiles or other unframed pieces that should be stored in acid-free atmospheres.

ACID-FREE PAPER OR CANVAS
Paper or canvas treated to neutralized its natural acidity in order to protect fine art and photographic prints from discoloration and deterioration.

ARCHIVAL INKS
The inks used to produce fine art reproduction lithography and giclee prints that have been tested for permanence.

ART NOUVEAU
A painting,, decorative design, and architectural style developed in England in the 1880s. Art Nouveau, primarily an ornamental style, was not only a protest against the sterile Realism, but against the whole drift toward industrialization and mechanization and the unnatural artifacts they produced. The style is characterized by the usage of sinuous, graceful, cursive lines, interlaced patterns, flowers, plants, insects and other motifs inspired by nature.

ARTIST'S PROOF
Print intended for the artist's personal use. It is a common practice to reserve approximately ten percent of an edition as artist's proof's although this figure can be higher. The artist's proof is sometimes referred to by its French name, epreuve d'artist {abbreviated E.A.}. Artist proofs can be distinguished by the abbreviation A.P. or E.A., commonly on the lower left corner of the print.

CANVAS
A heavy woven fabric usually made from cotton or linen, used as a support for a painting. The surface is prepared for by applying gesso or rabbit skin glue. Interlocked or woven fibers used as the ground material for needle art.

CANVAS TRANSFER
The process which lifts the image on a print off the paper support so that it can be transferred to a canvas mount

COATED PAPER
Paper with a surface coating to produce a smooth finish either matt or gloss.

COLOR MANAGEMENT
An advanced technology that uses profiles of the input and output devices to maximize color accuracy. The color targets that include over 3,000 colors are printed and measured with a colorimeter to create profiles for the various printing substrates for litho and giclee printing.

COPYRIGHT
The exclusive rights to reproduce, sell and distribute a work, prepare derivative works and display the work publicly.

CUBISM
An art style developed in 1908 by Picasso and Braque whereby the artist breaks down the natural forms of the subjects into geometric shapes and creates a new kind of pictorial space. In contrast to traditional painting styles where the perspective of subjects is fixed and complete, cubist work can portray the subject from multiple perspectives.

DADAISM
An art style founded by Hans Are in Zürich after World War I which challenged the established canons of art, thoughts, morality, etc. Disgusted with the war and society in general, Dadaists expressed their feelings by creating "non-art". The Dada, a nonsense or baby talk term, symbolizes the loss of meaning in the European culture. Dada art is difficult to interpret since there is no common foundation. Since Dadaists did not claim that the objects they created were art, all objects including found objects that were retrieved from the waste bins and such, could be incorporated to create non-art.

DECKLED EDGES
Watercolor papers that artist use have natural deckles on two or four sides. The look of a litho paper print or giclee paper print can be improved by tearing two or four sides instead of cutting the print.

DIGITAL ARCHIVING
Digital images and layouts that are archived to CD-ROM. The information that is necessary to reproduce the litho or giclee job at a later time.

DIGITAL FILE
A art file that resides on disk, usually on CD ROM, in a native application format.

DIGITAL LAYOUT
A document created using a digital application that shows the precise layout of a image or images. The layout indicates both the exact size of the image and the amount of white space around the image. A layout may also include type, logo's, and artist remarque.

DPI
Dots per inch. A measurement of a device's output resolution and quality. Measures the number of dots a printer can print per inch both horizontally and vertically. A 600 dpi printer can print 360,000 {600 by 600} dots on one square inch pf paper.

EDITION
The total number of copies printed from the same plates and published about the same time.

EPS
Encapsulated Postscript. An image description format. EPS translates graphics and text into descriptions to a printer oh how to draw them. The font and pictures themselves need not be loaded into the printer; they've been encapsulated into the EPS code.

EXPRESSIONISM
An art movement of the early 20th century in which adherence to realism and proportion was replaced by the artist's emotional connection to the subject. These paintings are often abstract, the subject matter distorted in color and form to emphasize and express the intense emotion of the artist.

GICLEE
The French term meaning "spraying ink." The Printing is directly from information obtained from the original painting,  Iris Printers spray microscopic drops of color on to a fine art paper or canvas. Displaying the full color spectrum, these artworks have vibrant, brilliant colors and a velvety texture.  This gives the finished product the look and texture of an original painting.

GRAYSCALE
The spectrum, or range, of shades of black an image has. Scanners' and terminals' gray scale are determined by the number of gray shades, or steps, they can recognize and reproduce. A scanner that can only see a gray scale of only 16 will not produce as accurate an image as one that distinguishes a gray scale of 256.

HIGH RESOLUTION
A image that is displayed in better quality by increasing the number of  dots, or pixels, per inch than normal. Usually refers to better quality computer displays, but can describe printer quality as well. Called hi-res for short.

IMPRESSIONISM
An art movement founded in France in the last third of the 19th century. Impressionist artist sought to break up light onto its component - colors and render its ephemeral play various objects. The artist's vision was intensely centered on light and the ways it transformed the visible world. This style of painting is characterized by short brush strokes of bright colors used to recreate visual impressions of the subject and to capture the light, climate and atmosphere of the subject: at a specific moment in time. The chosen colors represent light - which is broken down into its spectrum components and recombined by the eyes into another color when viewed at a distance {an optical mixture}. The term was first used 1874 by a journalist ridiculing a landscape by Monet called Impressionist-Sunrise.

IRIS or GICLEE
A computerized reproduction technique in which the image and topology are generated from a digital file and printed by a special ink jet printer, using ink, acrylic or oil paints. Giclee printing offers one of the highest degree of accuracy and richness of color available in any reproduction techniques.

JPEG
Joint Photographic Experts Group. A highly compressed graphics format designed to handle computer images of high resolution photographs as efficiently as possible.

LIMITED EDITION
Set of identical prints numbered in succession and signed by the artist. The total number of prints is fixed or "limited" by the artist who supervises the printing him {her} self. All additional prints have been destroyed.

LITHOGRAPHY
Printing technique using a planographic process in which prints are pulled on a special press from a flat stone or metal surface that has been chemically sensitized so that ink sticks only to the design areas, and is repelled by the non-image areas.

LOW-RES
Short for low resolution. Low quality reproduction because of a small number of dots or lines  per inch.

LPI
Lines per inch. Measure of resolution for halftones.

MOIRE
screen pattern in printing caused by  overlaying conflicting screen angles. Resembles the moire pattern of silk.

MONOPRINT
One of a kind print conceived by the artist and printed by or under the artist;s supervision.

OFFSET LITHOGRAPHY
A special photo-mechanical technique in which the image to be printed is transferred to the negative plates and printed onto paper.

OPEN EDITION
A series of prints or objects in an art edition that has an unlimited number of copies.

ORIGINAL
A unique piece of artwork that cannot be exactly duplicated. While the image may be duplicated as a print, the reproduction is not oil paint on canvas.

PANTONE COLORS
A color system of over 1200 standard colors developed by Pantone Inc.

PIXEL
An acronym for Picture Element. When an image is defined by many tiny dots, those dots are pixels. A pixel represents the smallest graphic unit of measurement on a screen. The actual size of a pixel is screen dependent, and varies according to the size of the screen and the resolution being used.

PMS
Pantone Matching System. A means of describing colors by assigning them numbers.

POP ART
A style of art which seeks its inspiration from commercial art and items of mass culture {such as comic strips, popular foods, and brand name packaging}. Pop art was first developed in New York City in the late 1950's and soon became the dominant avant-garde art form in the United States.

POSTSCRIPT
A page definition language developed by Adobe Systems. When a page of text and or graphics is saved as a Postscript file, the page is stored as a set of instructions specifying the measurements, typefaces, and graphic shapes that make up the page.

PRINTER'S PROOF
Print retained by the printer as a reference. Artists often sign these prints as a gesture of appreciation.

PROCESS COLORS
Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and black. Technically the four process colors are "subtractive" colors that are used in four color printed reproduction work. In desktop publishing it's one of the color models; the other's being HSB, PMS, and RGB.

REALISM
A style of painting which depicts subject matter {form, color, space} as it appears in actuality or ordinary visual experience without distortion or stylization.

REMARQUE
Small sketch in the margin of an art print or additional enhancements by the artist on some or all of the final prints within an edition.

RGB
Red, Green, Blue. The primary colors called additive colors, used by color monitor displays and TVs. The combination and intensities of these three colors can represent the whole spectrum. 

ROMANTICISM
An art style which emphasizes the personal, emotional and dramatic through the use of exotic, literary, or historical subject matter.

SCANNER
An electronic device used in making  color separations. Originals are placed on drums, which are rotated, reproduce the original via digital and electronic signals transferred to the finished digital file size through fiber optics. Scanners utilize electronic circuits to correct color, compress the tones and enhance the detail.

SERIGRAPHY {SILKSCREEN}
A printing technique that makes use of a squeegee to force ink directly on to a piece of paper or canvas through a stencil creating an image on a screen of silk or other fine fabric with an impermeable substance. Silkscreen differs from most other printing in that its color areas are paint films rather than printing-ink stains.

SPOT COLOR
A specific color in a design, usually designated to be printed with a specific matching ink, rather than through process CMYK printing.

SURREALISM
An art style developed in Europe in the 1920's characterized by using the subconscious as a source of creativity to liberate pictorial subject and ideas. Surrealist paintings often depict unexpected or irrational objects in an atmosphere of fantasy, creating a dream-like scenario.

SYMBOLISM
An art style developed in the late 19th century characterized by the incorporation of symbols and ideas, usually spiritual or mystic in nature, which represent the inner life of people. Traditional modeled, pictorial depictions are contrasted by flat mosaic-like surfaces decoratively embellished with figures and design elements.

TRANSPARENCY
The high quality reproduction requires copy transparencies made by photographers experienced in art reproduction. Lighting is very important in terms of evenness, color, and lack of specular highlights. Transparencies should either be 4x5 or 8x10 inches, not a 35mm slide. The pre-press process creates a print that looks as close as possible to the transparency, not the original, so the transparency should reflect the original as accurately as possible.

TROMPE L'OEIL {TRICK OF THE EYE}
A style of painting in which architectural details are rendered in extremely fine detail in order to create the illusion of tactile {tangible} and spatial qualities. This form of painting was first used by the Romans thousands of years ago in frescoes and murals. Trompel L'oeil can be thought of as a form of architectural realism.