Back to basics: Glossary of design term
Skill Level: Novice

Glossary: G

GIF
Stands for Graphics Interchange Format. GIF images are the most widely used graphic format on the web. GIF images display up to 256 colors.

Glow
A glow is the opposite of a shadow in that it creates a surrounding highlight of an image. A high radiance creates a soft, subtle glow and a low radiance creates a hard, bright glow, such as a neon glow.

Gradient
A gradient is a gradual transition of colors. Many metallic images are gradients. Web images that use gradient fills as a special effect should be saved in a JPEG rather than a GIF format.

Graphic Backgrounds
The bottom-most layer on a web page, usually with either a design or color that highlights the above copy. A small graphic can be tiled to create a background texture for a web page.

Grayscale
An application of black ink (for print) or the color black (for the screen) that simulates a range of tones. Grayscale images have no hue (color). In print design, a grayscale graphic image appears to be black, white, and shades of gray, but it only uses a single color ink.

Contents - Alphabetically sorted

• Glossary: A
• Glossary: B
• Glossary: C
• Glossary: D
• Glossary: E
• Glossary: F
• Glossary: G
• Glossary: H
• Glossary: I
• Glossary: J
• Glossary: K
• Glossary: L
• Glossary: M
• Glossary: N
• Glossary: O
• Glossary: P
• Glossary: Q
• Glossary: R
• Glossary: S
• Glossary: T
• Glossary: U
• Glossary: V
• Glossary: WXYZ

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