Glossary of terms

water marks marques/taches d’eau setting of the ink-dampening solution balance in which more water is used than necessary; “at the water marks” means at the limit to overdamping or underinking; opposite: point of smearing

waterless offset inks encres pour l’offset sans eau offset printing inks developed for printing without dampening solution; depending on the special printing plates, waterless offset inks have a binding agent containing a silicone oil substitute; the drying behaviors oxidative-penetrating (sheet, long grain), purely penetrating (coldset newspaper printing, that is, for the KBA Cortina), heatset (only in Japan) and solvent-evaporating(sheet) as well as UV-curing inks.

waterwashable lavable à l’eau property of a printing ink which can be washed with water from the rollers instead of with a washing agent.

wavelength longueur d’onde length of the oscillation period of a light ray in nanometers; 1 nm is one thousandth of a micrometer or 1 millionth of a millimeter.

web colors couleurs du web the colors of the palette programmed in Internet browsers; nameless hexadecimal code notation: 216 “web-safe colors” (couleurs web sécurisées) in 8 bpp, only 22 of which are “safest” according to today’s recalculation in 16 bpp. Modern web design requires the names of the hexadecimal colors in HTML notation, e.g. the 16 VGA standard hues, the 140 CCS-3 hues or the 147 extended color hues (“X-Windows v11”). Cascading-style sheets and extended color programming allow the definition of all web-safe colors in 256 gradations per color channel in the color space models RGB, RGBA (with alpha channel for transparency), CMYK as well as HSL and HSLA. For older browsers, a backwards-compatible table (fallback colors, couleurs de repli ) must be maintained; here, all CMYK and HSL notations are assigned an RGB notation.

wet-on-wet printing inks standard formulation for multicolor printing scales in all printing processes; UV inks show better ink trapping during interim curing.

wettability mouillabilité with respect to inks, their surface tension in terms of their capacity to be coated with waterbased varnish.

white alignment calibrage/étalonnage au blanc 1) procedure in the calibration of a device (digital camera, monitor, densitometer, spectrophotometer) in which the white is referred either to a white standard (device standard in reflected light,drum or screen transparency in transmitted light) or a certain paper white to be printed. 2) automatic color correction in image processing programs.

white point point blanc term commonly used in surface colors or monitor colors instead of the correct term neutral point, that is, the chromaticity coordinates of the illuminant.

whitener agent de blanchiment see optical/fluorescent brightening agent

whiteness blancheur in the sense of sensory color spaces, the achromatic tones of the lightness axis of L* = 50 to 100.

whiteness of paper , whiteness index indice de blancheur du papier, degré de blancheur characteristic of the achromaticness of substrates, for which there are several formulae; the CIELAB chromaticity coordinates are prevailing more and more. The effect of optical brighteners is not shown in whiteness.

whitening blanchiment increase in the contrast capability of inks through the addition of light pigments, e.g. blend white; see also fining

wide gamut inks encres à espace chromatique étendu CMYK ink series, highly pigmented (conglomerates) and printable with greater ink film thicknesses, whose color space is extended vis-à-vis ISO 12647-2, e.g. Epple aniva.

working color space espace colorimétrique de travail standard RGB color space optimized for processing images (color corrections, retouching, creations), defined in the form ofan ICC profile, e.g. AdobeRGB, eciRGB, sRGB (see Table W-1 “Working color spaces” on page 104); the optimizations avoid typical device weaknesses with respect to color space scope (objective: a “wide gamut” which shows all technically reproducible color shades), uniformity (evenly distributed color space support points) and lightness axis (ideal: L* gradation as in CIELAB); depending on its direct reference to an input source or an output target, a w. is handled as “scene-referred” (scRGB, RIMM RGB) or “output-referred” (sRGB, ProPhotoRGB ROMM, Wide Gamut RGB, eciRGB). The device independent CIELAB color space, which does not have to be represented as a profile, can also serve as a w.

Wysiwyg , “what you see is what you get” « tel affichage, tel résultat » the ideal aimed at in image reproduction; very easily realizable claim by the soft copy proof to show on the monitor what the output in a printer or in a printing press would show.