Even More "P" Terms in Our Photoshop Glossary

Joli Ballew
Categories : Publishing ,Multimedia
Tags : Multimedia publishing topics dtp tips

Page content

Polygons: Closed shapes like triangles, squares, rectangles, and octagons, these are shapes that have three or more sides.

Pop-up palette: Some palettes are not available from the window menu choices and instead appear when a specific tool is chosen and is being configured. These are available from the options bar and denoted by a small arrow. Click on the arrow to access the palettes.

PostScript: A page description language for medium to high resolution print devices. The language consists of software commands and protocols that allow you to send data (including picture and font information) from your computer to the printer for output. PostScript is device independent, allowing different computers and printers to communicate independently of platforms.

ppi: Image resolution is a ratio of pixels per inch; the more pixels you squeeze into each inch of the image, the higher the resolution. Higher resolution means a better quality image.

Preserve Exact Colors: Check this when creating indexed colors to make any pure color a spot color.

Preset Manager: A dialog box that allows you to manage all preset items in one place. Changes made here affect all of the presets you see when accessing them from any area of Photoshop. The Preset Manager is available from Edit>Preset Manager.

Print Selected Area: This check box is available if you’ve used a Selection tool to select a specific area of the image prior to opening the Print dialog box. When this box is checked, only the selected area is printed.

Process color: Used when you want to print photorealistic prints. Process color printing requires that you create four unique halftone screens, one for each of the four colors (CMYK). These screens are really just dots on a page that control how much ink should be put in a particular part of the image.

Proprietary file format: A proprietary format means the file can only be opened in the program in which it was created, such as Arts & Letters’ GED files, Adobe Photoshop’s PSD files, Paint Shop Pro’s PSP files, CorelDRAW’s CDR files, and other file formats.

PSD file format: Photoshop’s own format for saving files. Files saved in this format retain layer and channel information. The image’s resolution and spot color channels are also saved, as is image bit depth. PSD files save information about the file, including its layers and channels, so that those items can be continually edited.

This post is part of the series: Photoshop Terms from A to Z - A Glossary

Learn common and obscure terms used by Adobe Photoshop in this A-to-Z series.