CMYK
Acronym for "Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, black" -- the ink colors commonly used by professional printing companies to compose full-color printed materials. CMYK is also used with many inkjet printers for home and business applications.

EPS
Acronym for "Encapsulated PostScript" -- a file format developed by Adobe Systems which can contain vector or bitmap art, or both. EPS can be used for commercial printing and can contain any color mode. EPS provides the most accurate color fidelity of all formats. File size typically is triple that of a compressed TIFF and many times that of a JPEG.

FreeHand
A popular vector-based drawing program.

GIF
Acronym for "Graphic Interchange Format" -- a file format in index mode used mainly on the Internet. Contains up to 256 colors. Usually considered low-resolution and unfit for commercial printing.

Grayscale Mode
A file format containing up to 256 shades of gray but no color. Grayscale can be used for on-screen and commercial printing applications.

Illustrator
Industry standard vector-based drawing program from Adobe Systems.

Index Color Mode
An image in index mode contains 256 different colors, each of which is assigned to its own numbered slot on a palette. Same file size as grayscale mode, but usually considered low-resolution and unfit for commercial printing.

JPEG
Acronym for "Joint Photographic Experts Group." Describes a method for compressing images that's compatible with most computer platforms but which results in a loss of pixels each time the image is saved (a condition referred to as "lossy compression"). Frequently used for Internet images, but generally considered low-resolution and unfit for commercial printing unless successfully converted to TIFF or EPS file with sufficiently high resolution. Requires RGB color mode for Web display, but can support CMYK mode for other uses.

Photoshop
Industry standard image editing program from Adobe Systems.

QuarkXPress
Industry standard page layout program.

RGB
Acronym for "Red, Green, Blue" -- the phosphors on a computer monitor or television screen which create the images you see.

TIFF
Acronym for "Tagged Image File Format" -- one of the most widely accepted cross-platform formats (i.e., works with both Macintosh and Windows environments). Can contain any color mode and can be compressed without pixel loss using Photoshop's LZW compression capability.