Unit 18: Producing Print

Task 2 – Types of printing

Using the internet as a research tool, explain what the following types of printing are and how they came about:

Letter Press- 

Letterpress is the oldest form of printing. In this method, a surface with raised letters is inked and pressed to the surface of the printing substrate to reproduce an image in reverse. Typically, metal type has been used but other possibilities include carved wood or stone blocks.

Laser Printing-

A laser printer is a printer that uses a focused beam or light to transfer text and images onto paper. Though contrary to popular belief, the laser does not actually burn the images onto the paper. Instead, as paper passes through the printer, the laser beam fires at the surface of a cylindrical drum called a photoreceptor. This drum has an electrical charge (typically positive), that is reversed in areas where the laser beam hits it. By reversing the charge in certain areas of the drum, the laser beam can print patterns (such as text and pictures) onto the photoreceptor.

Desktop Publishing-

When documents and images are printed, they are "published." Before computers became commonplace, the publishing process required large print presses that copied and duplicated pages. In order to print images and words on the same page, the text and graphics would have to printed separately, cut out, placed on a single sheet, taped in place, then copied and printed. Fortunately, computers with graphical user interface have enabled desktop publishing, which allows this process to be done electronically.

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Quote Senerio

Four colour process printing is a system where a colour image is separated into 4 different colour values (called a colour separation) by the use of filters and screens. This used to be done with photographic film on a graphic arts camera, but is usually done digitally with software now. The result is a colour separation of 4 images that when transferred to printing plates and sequentially printed on a printing press with the coloured inks cyan (blue), magenta (red), yellow and black (the k in cmyk), reproduces the original colour image. Most of the entire spectrum or gamut of colours are reproduced with just the four process ink colours. The four colour printing process is universally used in the graphic arts and commercial printing industry for the reproduction of colour images and text.

CMYK Process Printing Features

• Uses same 4 standardized base colors all the time (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black)
• Small dots of these colours are printed at different angles to create the printed image
• Most widely used and cost effective colour system in commercial printing
• Significantly cheaper than toner based printing for larger quantity runs