Highland Printing Offset Printing

Lithographic printing is well suited for printing both text and illustrations in short to medium length runs of up to 1,000,000 impressions. Typical products printed with offset printing processes include:

• General commercial printing
• Large Volume Printing
• Full Colour Printing
• Newspapers & Books
• Business Forms Financial and Legal Documents
• Products to be printed on card or other specialty stock
• Products that need varnishing or celloglazing
• Products requiring metallic or flourescent inks

The three primary differences in offset printing and desktop printing (such as inkjet and laser) are the colors of ink and the way the ink is placed on the paper as well as the type of machinery used to accomplish the task. The method of printing dictates how the desktop publishing document must be prepared.

Ink Colors
Both commercial offset printing (also known as offset lithography) and inkjet desktop printing utilize four basic ink colors: CMYK. Dots of cyan (blue), magenta (red), yellow, and black (the K) are placed next to each other in specific patterns that trick the eye into seeing millions of colors. Additionally, offset printing can use premixed inks in a variety of specific colors as well as metallic and florescent inks. These are called spot colors.

Printing Process
Inkjet printing puts all the different ink colors on the paper in one pass through the printer. In commercial offset printing each color of ink is applied separately.

Separations
Whether printing in CMYK inks or spot colors, for offset printing you must supply a file that can be separated into different files for each ink color. These separations contain only the elements of the document that will print in one color of ink. The printing plates for offset printing are made from these separations.