Offset printing

Offset printing transfers ink from a printing plate to a rubber blanket, then from the blanket to paper. Its indirect transfer produces consistent images across large print runs.

Lithography: A planographic printing method in which ink adheres to image areas and is repelled by non-image areas. Offset printing adapts lithography by transferring the plate image through a rubber blanket.
Sheet-fed printing: A printing method that feeds individual sheets into a press rather than a continuous web. It is the common offset format for books, brochures, and other sheet-based work.
Digital printing: Printing from digital data without making a physical image-bearing plate for each job. It avoids offset plate setup and often suits short runs or variable content.
Alois Senefelder: A German playwright and inventor who developed lithography in the late eighteenth century. His planographic method supplied the principle later adapted for offset presses.
Mass production: The manufacture of large quantities of standardized goods through repeatable production methods. Once plates are prepared, offset can reproduce identical pages rapidly across long runs.
Printing plate: A surface bearing an image or text that guides ink transfer in a printing process. The plate carries the image that reaches paper through the blanket.
Web offset printing: Offset printing that feeds paper from a continuous roll through the press. Its continuous paper feed suits high-volume publications and packaging.
Flexography: A relief printing process that uses flexible plates to transfer ink directly to a substrate. It prints packaging materials directly and handles substrates that challenge conventional offset.
Lithographic printing: Printing from a flat surface using the different affinities of image and non-image areas for ink and water. Offset's plate stage descends from this printing method.
Color separation: The division of a color image into separate components for printing with different inks. Offset color printing relies on separate plate images, commonly for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.

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