The Print Process

There are many ways of getting ink on the paper. Lithography, Digital, Gravure, Screen Printing to name but a few.

Now isn’t the time to go into them all in detail – instead I will concentrate on the 2 most common (depending on your industry) – Litho and Digital.
There are many pages for you to look up how the process works, but to simplify – litho would be used for large scale print jobs, digital for smaller more specific needs.
Litho (web offset and sheet offset) works on the principal that oil and water don’t mix.
Plates are made for each of the colours in the job (CMYK) and loaded onto the press. Sheet fed presses sending a sheet at a time, Web fed presses feeding the press off a roll of paper.
The presses operate at great speed and with a B1 press for example capable of producing a booklet in one pass and thousands of sheets per hour.
Digital presses come in many different formats – from A4 copiers up to large format printers capable of printing 5m widths.
All using the same principal – direct printing on to a sheet without the need to use a plate.
The selection of Litho v Digital will be based on the print run length, digital print being more cost effective for short runs and litho for larger print runs.