Vocabulary

As you learn more about graphics programs, you will come across a variety of words that have specific connotations in such programs. Here are a few of the more common ones. If you have a word you think should be on this vocabulary page, please contact us.

Frames

Term used for sequential images that will appear one after another. Used to make animated products, like Animated GIFs or Flash documents. Frames are also used in making rollovers with Fireworks. Drawn from the use of the same term in film.

Guides

Most graphics programs have a grid and guides that can be turned on and off. Guides are used to make sure that images line up properly and that different pieces of images align with each other.

Handles

Often used in connection with paths, handles allow you to change the direction/severity of the curve around a certain point.

Hotspot

Hotspots are areas on an image that are hotlinks. Used most often with image maps.

Layers

Layers are a system used in graphics programs to make it easy to separately manipulate small parts of images. (See our help page on layers for more information).

Opacity

Refers to how opaque (opposite of transparent) something is. Usually given in a percentage. Something 100% opaque would be entirely visible; something 0% opaque would be entirely transparent.

100% opacity		50% opacity

Path

A line used in graphics programs to determine how a line will be drawn. Usually, paths have points and handles on them that allow the curves and angles to be changed. See our Freehand help for more detailed description of path-manipulation.

Raster

A term for graphics composed of pixels (as opposed to vectors). See the NWE's help page on raster and vector graphics for more information on that.

Slice

When making a rollover (or more often, a set of rollovers), sometimes an image is broken up into an invisible table, so that only part of the image "rolls over" when the mouse passes over it. Each section of this table is called a slice.

Vector

A term for graphics composed of a series of instructions (as opposed to raster pixel graphics). See the NWE's help page on raster and vector graphics for more information on that.