Web site Design & Development - Sydney, Australia

Printing FAQ

What is Offset /Lithography printing ?

What's the Difference between Direct-to-Plate and Digital Printing ?

What is Offset /Lithography printing ?

Offset lithography is the most commonly used commercial printing process for the bulk of desktop publishing on paper. Offset lithography is used on both sheet-fed and web offset presses. 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. To reproduce full-color photographic images, typical printing presses use 4 colors of ink. The four inks are placed on the paper in layers of dots that combine to create the illusion of many more colors. CMYK refers to the 4 ink colors used by the printing press. C is cyan (blue), M is magenta (red), Y is yellow, and K is black, the key plate or keyline color. A mistake often made when submitting artwork for 4-color printing is not converting the images to the CMYK color space. This is needed so that the file can be separated into the four colors so that a separate printing plate can be made for each of the colors.

What is Web offset printing ?

First of all, no, web presses don’t have anything to do with the internet. Web presses are used to print large quantities (thousands of copies) of magazines, newspapers or catalogs. This process is used for mass-producing prints because a web offset press can run much, much faster than ordinary sheet-fed offset presses, while still delivering excellent quality. Also, web presses can typically handle several colors of ink at the same time. These extra color capabilities are usually used for varnishes.
If it sounds like your print job calls for a web press then please discuss this option with us..

What's the Difference between Direct-to-Plate and Digital Printing ?

In direct-to-plate printing, the printing plate is made directly from the computer file, thus eliminating the need for film. Producing film is expensive and time consuming, which is why direct-to-plate printing has become so popular for low-quantity jobs.
Like direct-to-plate printing, digital printing eliminates the need for film by using computer files. However, digital printing goes one step further by creating prints directly from the computer file and therefore taking the plates out of the equation as well. This makes the digital printing process more similar to color photocopying than to traditional printing.
Digital printing is ideal for lower-quantity and customized needs, but can only print CMYK images and files. Like photocopying, however, the price-per-piece tends to be the same.

what is CMYK colour ?

CMYK Colour stands for Cyan , Magenta , Yellow and Black . These four inks are used in printing, from your desktop inkjet printer to printing presses they need to mix these basic colour together to form the colour spectrum that you see on the final piece. This spectrum of colour is called a subtractive colour spectrum, which means that you have to subtract colours to get white (or the colour of the paper).

CMYK is the only way to print on a press, so when you are creating your piece to be printed you need to have all colour art work and images in CMYK or unexpected problems will appear. This could cause delays because of extra system time. Unfortunately because of the different spectrums between RGB and CMYK you might not match some colours that you see on screen.

cmyk colour

What is RGB colour?

RGB colour is an additive colour system. What this means is that the colours , and are used to form a variety of colours. If you add an equal amount of red light, green light and blue light you will get white light. This is the colour system that your computer monitor displays and even when you are watching TV, the pictures are being displayed in a RGB colour mode.

what is SPOT colour ?

Spot colours are premade inks that can be used instead of, or in addition to CMYK process colour inks. A spot colour is usually a PMS (Pantone Matching System ® ) colour designated by a number and whether or not the ink is to be printed on specific stock. For example Pantone 123 CVC is used for coated stock and Pantone 281 CVU is used for uncoated stocks.

When printing spot colours each colour needs its own plate on the press. Spot colours are mainly used in one to three colour jobs. If you are using four spot colours you may as well make it a CMYK job (unless the colours are absolutely specific to the content). CMYK printing is far cheaper than four spot colours.