| Machine Coated | (printing) | Paper whichi s coated one or two sides on a paper machine. |
| Mackinaw | (fashion) | Ordinary grade of wool, very heavy and thick. Generally has remanufactured wool mixed in. |
| Macro Lens | (photography) | Camera lens that continuously focuses up to extreme close-ups. |
| Makeready | (printing) | All work done to set up a press for printing. |
| Manteau | (fashion) | A loose coat, cloak, or robe. |
| Marquisette | (fashion) | Sheer, lightweight, mesh fabric used for clothing and curtains. Can be made out of silk, cotton, rayon, or synthetics. |
| Matrix | (photography) | Autoexposure metering where the camera sets both aperture and shutter speed based on the camera's memory. |
| Matte Finish | (printing) | Dull paper without a finish gloss or luster. |
| Maxi | (fashion) | A long dress, skirt, or coat. Example: Maxi-Dress |
| Megabyte | (digital) | (Mbyte, MB, Meg) One million character codes on the computer. A unit measurement equal to 1,024 kilobytes or 1,048,576 bytes. |
| Megahertz | (digital) | (MHz) Frequency equal to one million cycles per second. Measures bandwidth or analog electroic signals. |
| Megapixel | (digital) | One millon pixels. |
| Merino | (fashion) | A soft fabric made of wool or a wool and cotton blend that resembles cashmere. |
| Middletones | (photography) | The tonal range between highlights and shadows of a photograph or reproduction. |
| Moiré | (printing) | The undesirable screen pattern caused by incorrect screen angles of overprinting halftones. |
| Molleton | (lithography) | A thick cotton fabric, similar to flannel, used on the dampening rollers of a press. |
| Montage | (printing) | Several photographs combined to form a composite illustration. |
| Mottle | (printing) | The spotty or uneven appearance of printing, mostly in solid areas. |
| Mylar | (offset preperation) | A polyester film specially suited for stripping positives because of its mechanical strength and dimensional stability. |
| Natural Waist | (fashion) | Seam or waistband that fastens or falls just above the hips and just below the ribcage. |
| Narrow Lighting | (photography) | When the main light is completely illuminating the side of a subject's face (when the face is turned away from the camera). |
| Negative | (photography) | Film containing an image in which the values of the original are reversed so the dark areas in the subject matter appear light on the film and vice versa. |
| Negative Space | (design/digital) | The space where the text or image is not. |
| Neo-Grotesque | (printing) | A style of sans serif type. |
| Nested Indent | (typography) | An indentation in which each subsequent indent is set relative to the last indent, rather than from the margins. |
| Natural Density Filter | (photography) | Type of filter used to decrease the amount of light entering into a lens. |
| Newsprint | (printing) | Paper made mostly from groundwood pulp and small amounts of chemical pulp; used for printing newspapers. |
| Noise | (photography) | Grainy look found in a digital image. It is caused by image artifacts. |
| Non-impact printer | (printing) | An electronic device, like a copier, laser, or inkjet printer that creates images on a surface without contacting it. |
| Nonprinting characters | (digital) | Something that appears on screen, but does not print. Example: Rulers, guidelines, gridlines, hidden text. |
| Non-wovens | (fashion) | Fabric that is made by webs of fiber held together by bonding, chemicals, adhesives, or mechanical action. The oldest non-woven material is felt. |
| Norfolk Jacket | (fashion) | A loose, belted, single breasted jacket. The jacket has box pleats on the back (sometimes on the front) and was originally used as a shooting coat. |
| Normal Lens | (photography) | A lens with a focal length approximately equal to the diagonol measurement of the film being used. |
| Notched collar | (fashion) | Two-piece collar that must be worn open. |
| Oblique | (typography) | Alternate term for italic (right-leaning change in the posture of the characters) |
| Off-set proofs | (digital) | Proofs made by photomechanical or digital means in less time and at a lower cost than press proofs. |
| Offset | (printing) | Process of using an intermediate blanket cylinder to transfer an image from the image carrier to the substrate. |
| Offset gravure | (printing) | Generally done on a flexographic press by converting the anilox roller to a gravure image cylinder and veering the plate cylinder with a solid rubber plate. |
| Opacity | (printing) | The property of paper that minimizes the show-through of printing from the back side or the next sheet. |
| Opaque | Not transperant. Or, to paint out areas on a negative not wanted on the plate or the property which makes it less transparent. | |
| Open Prepress Interface | Extension to PostScript that automatically replaces low-res placeholder images with hi-res images. | |
| Organic clothing | (fashion) | Clothing made from materials that have not been grown with pesticides, herbicides, or other chemicals. |
| Orthochromatic | (photography) | Photographic surfaces insensitive to red but sensitive to ultraviolet, blue, green and yellow rays. |
| Overexposure | (photography) | When too much light reaches the film creating a dense negative or very light print. |
| Overlay | (printing) | A transparent covering over the copy where color break, instructions or corrections are marked. Also trasparent or translucent prints which, when places one on the other form a composite picture. |
| Overlay proof | (printing) | A color proof produced with four dyed or pigmented overlay films. |
| Overprinting | (printing) | Double printing; printing over an area that already has been printed on. |
| Overrun | (printing) | Copies printed in excess of the specified quantity. |
| Overset | (printing) | Type that goes beyond the allotted space. |
