Welcome to part II of Graphic Terms- The Basics. Maybe you're learning these terms to help you understand more about designing your own e-covers. Maybe you're learning to understand the terms in your search to have your e-cover professionally designed. In either case these terms will give you a very basic understanding of commonly used terms in graphic design. With the tools available today it's fairly easy to come up with an e cover for your e-book or software. It's a bit more difficult to uncover the real tricks of the trade that only a professional can effectively use. Even if you're determined to create your own, it will most likely be a good return on your investment to at least consult with a professional.

Terms A-N are located in Part I.

Terms O-Z are located in Part ll.

No terms for the letter O.

PNG
PNG stands for Portable Network Graphics format. PNG is used for lossless compression and displaying images on the web. Two advantages of PNG are that it supports images with millions of colors and produces background transparency without jagged edges. The major disadvantages are PNG images will not show up on older browsers, and can be comparatively larger in file size than GIFs.

PPI
PPI stands for pixels per inch. PPI specifies the resolution for an input device, such as a scanner, or monitor. Web page resolution ranges from 72-96 pixels per inch.

RGB
RGB stand for the colors Red-Green-Blue. In design for computer monitors, colors are defined in terms of a combination of these three colors. Print designers usually define colors using CMYK.

Royalty-Free Images
Photos or graphic images that are sold for a single standard fee and may be used repeatedly by the purchaser. Normally with royalty-free clauses, the company that sells you the images still owns all the rights to the images and they are allowed only for use by the purchaser.

Saturation
The color intensity of an image is called its saturation. An image high in saturation will appear to be very bright. An image low in saturation will appear to be duller and more neutral.

Thumbnail
A small version of a graphic image.

Vector Graphic
A vector graphic is a graphic image drawn in shapes and line, called paths. Images created in Illustrator and Freehand (graphic design software) are vector graphics. They are usually exported to be bitmap images.

WYSIWYG
An abbreviation for What You See Is What You Get.