useful information

Glossary - V

Value

Relative lightness or darkness of a colour, or the relation of one part of a photograph to another in regards to lightness or darkness.

Varnish

A coating printed on top of a printed sheet to protect it, add a finish, and/or add a tinge of colour. An entire sheet may be varnished, or certain areas, like halftones, may be spot varnished to add emphasis and appeal.

Varnishing

A finishing process whereby an aqueous, transparent varnish is applied over the printed sheet to produce a glossy finish. With large areas of solid colour it protects from scuffing and offsetting, and you can enhances pictures by selectively gloss varnishing them. It can be tinted as well for special effects, and used as a graphic element.

Vector

Resolution and device independent mathematical descriptions of shapes. Made up of primitives, vector images require much less storage space and memory than bitmaps - file size for a vector image the size of a business card will be pretty much the same for the same image on a billboard. They don't distort when resized like bitmaps, can be infinitely rescaled and have no specific resolution until output of imported into Photoshop.

Vegetable-based Ink

Using vegetable oil, rather than petroleum solvents, as the vehicle for carrying pigment. Vegetable ink colours tend to be more vibrant than petroleum-based inks, but may take longer to dry. This book, Words on Paper, is printed with soy- based ink, a type of vegetable-based ink.

Vellum

Treated skin of a calf used as a writing material, also used to describe a thick creamy, translucent book paper often used for overlays.

Velox

Photographic print made from screened negative.

Verso

Left-hand page of a book.

Vertical justification

The ability to adjust the leading and manipulation of text in fine increments to make columns and pages end at the same horizontal point on a page.

VGA

Video Graphics Array, IBM PC video adapter that can support a display with a resolution up to 640x480 in 256 colours. This was superseded by SVGA.

Vide

Latin for 'see' used in cross-referencing: vide infra for see below and vide supra for see above.

Vignette

(a) halftone etching out the tone around the edges of the image on a halftone to make it fade away (b) a small illustration in a book not enclosed in a definite border. (c) a gradient fill.

Vinyl

Synthetic plastic products which can be made in film, sheet or other forms. Vinyls can be manufactured in rigid or flexible constructions. Generally more flexible and formable than polyesters. Also known as PVC or polyvinyl chloride. A tough durable plastic film having excellent resistance to oils, chemicals and many solvents. It has excellent abrasion-resistance, and can also be coloured. Its high stretch is due to the addition of plasticiser.

Virgin fiber

Fiber that has never been used before in the manufacture of paper or other products.

Virgule

Oblique stroke

Virtual memory

Area of a computers hard disk used when more memory is required than is installed in the computer. When the computer runs out of memory, it starts 'paging' data to Virtual Memory.

Viscosity

Degree of tack and flow of an ink.

Visited links

A visited link’s text describing the destination changes colour after being clicked.

Visualisation

Creative act of 'seeing’ or conceiving the finished project to look when it is finished and printed.

Volume