Printing
Printing is a process for production of texts and images, typically with ink on
paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial
process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing.
Printing History:
Printing was first conceived and developed in China. Primitive woodblock printing
was already in use by the 6th century in China. In the Tang Dynasty, a Chinese writer
named Fenzhi first mentioned in his book "Yuan Xian San Ji" that the woodblock was
used to print Buddhist scripture during the Zhenguan years (627~649 A.D.). The oldest
known Chinese surviving printed work is a woodblock-printed Buddhist scripture of
Wu Zetian period (684~705 A.D.); discovered in Tubofan, Xingjian province, China
in 1906, it is now stored in a calligraphy museum in Tokyo, Japan. Printing is considered
one of the Four Great Inventions of ancient China.
The oldest known Korean surviving printed document is a Buddhist scripture, which
dates to 751 [1] The oldest surviving book printed using the more sophisticated
block printing, the Chinese Diamond Sutra (a Buddhist scripture), dates from 868.
The movable type printer was first invented by Bi Sheng in 1041 during Song Dynasty
China. In a memorial to the throne in 1023, Northern Song Dynasty China, it recorded
that the central government at that time used copperplate to print the paper money
also the movable copper-block to print the numbers and characters on the money,
nowadays we can find these shadows from the Song paper money. Later in the Jin Dynasty,
people used the same but more developed technique to print paper money and formal
official documents, the typical example of this kind of movable copper-block printing
is a printed "check" of Jin Dynasty in the year of 1215. The world's first movable
type metal printing press was invented in Korea in 1234 by Chwe Yun-ui during the
Goryeo Dynasty. By the 12th and 13th century many Chinese libraries contained tens
of thousands of printed books. The oldest extant movable metal-type book is the
Jikji, printed in 1377 in Korea.
There is little direct evidence, but it is highly probable that the Far East printing
technology diffused into Europe through the trade routes from China which went through
India and on through the Arabic world. Johann Gutenberg, of the German city of Mainz,
developed European printing technology in 1440. Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer experimented
with him in Mainz. Basing the design of his machine on a wine-press, Gutenberg developed
the use of raised and movable type, and from the start used oil-based inks.
The development of the printing press revolutionized communication and book production
leading to the spread of knowledge. A printing press was built in Venice in 1469,
and by 1500 the city had 417 printers. In 1470 Johann Heynlin set up a printing
press in Paris. In 1476 a printing press was developed in England by William Caxton.
The Italian Juan Pablos set up an imported press in Mexico City in 1539. Stephen
Day was the first to build a printing press in North America at Massachusetts Bay
in 1628, and helped establish the Cambridge Press.
Early print shops (near the time of Gutenberg) were run by "master printers." These
printers owned shops, selected and edited manuscripts, determined the sizes of print
runs, sold the works they produced, raised capital and organized distribution.
Early print shop apprentices:
Usually between the ages of 15 and 20, worked for master printers. Apprentices were
not required to be literate, and literacy rates at the time were very low, in comparison
to today. Apprentices prepared ink, dampened sheets of paper, and assisted at the
press. An apprentice who wished to learn to become a compositor had to learn Latin
and spend time under the supervision of a journeyman.
Early Journeyman printers:
After completing their apprenticeships, journeyman printers were free to roam Europe
with their tools of trade and print where they journeyed to. This facilitated the
spread of printing to areas that were less print-centered.
Early Compositors: Those who set the type for printing.
Early Pressmen: the person who ran the press. This was physically labor intensive.
Master print shops became the cultural centre for literati.
The earliest-known image of a European, Gutenberg-style print shop is the Dance
of Death by Matthias Huss, at Lyon, 1499. This image depicts a compositor standing
at a compositor's case being grabbed by a skeleton. The case is raised to facilitate
his work. The image also shows a pressman being grabbed by a skeleton. To the right
of the print shop a bookshop is shown.
In Prints and Visual Communication, William Ivins offers the following concise history
of a series of rapid innovations in image and type printing at the end of the eighteenth
century:
At the end of the eighteenth century there were several remarkable innovations in
the graphic techniques and those that were utilized to make their materials. Bewick
developed the method of using engraving tools on the end of the wood. Senefelder
discovered lithography. Blake made relief etchings. Early in the nineteenth century
Stanhope, George E. Clymer, Koenig and others introduced new kinds of type presses,
which for strength surpassed anything that had previously been known.
In 2006 there are approximately 30,700 printing companies in the United States,
accounting for $112 billion, according to the 2006 U.S. Industry & Market Outlook
by Barnes Reports.
Books and newspapers are printed today using the technique of offset lithography.
Other common techniques include:
flexography = used for packaging,
labels, newspapers
relief print = mainly used
for catalogues
screen printing = used to
print on variety of items from T-shirts to floor tiles
rotogravure = mainly used
for magazines and packaging,
inkjet = used when you have
to print a small number of books, packaging and to print a lot of materials from
high quality papers to simulate offset print to floor tiles
hot wax dye transfer = used
in industrial applications
laser printing = mainly
used in offices and for transactional printing
State-of-the-art presses use to mix more printing techniques so you can have an
offset machine with a flexo section for the varnishing of the product they are printing
or a digital printing unit.
Digital printing primarily uses an electrical charge to transfer toner or liquid
ink to the substrate it is printed on. Digital print quality has steadily improved
from color and black & white copiers to sophisticated color digital presses like
the Xerox iGen3, the Kodak Nexpress and the HP Indigo series presses. The iGen3
and Nexpress use toner particles and the Indigo uses liquid ink. All three are made
for small runs and variable data, and rival offset in quality. Digital offset presses
are called direct imaging presses; although these receive computer files and automatically
turn them into print-ready plates, they cannot do variable data.
Small press and fanzines generally use Digital printing or always more rarely xerography.
Prior to the introduction of cheap photocopying the use of machines such as the
spirit duplicator, hectograph, and mimeograph was common.
Offset Printing
Offset printing is a widely used printing technique where the inked image is transferred
(or "offset") from a plate first to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface.
When used in combination with the lithographic process, which is based on the repulsion
of oil and water, the offset technique employs a flat (planographic) image carrier
on which the image to be printed obtains ink from ink rollers, while the non-printing
area attracts a film of water, keeping the nonprinting areas ink-free.
The advantages of offset printing include:
- Consistent high image quality
- Sharper and cleaner than letterpress printing because the rubber blanket conforms
to the texture of the printing surface
- Usability on a wide range of printing surfaces in addition to smooth paper (e.g.,
wood, cloth, metal, leather, rough paper)
- Quick and easy production of printing plates
- Offset Printing offers longer plate life than on direct litho presses — because
there is no direct contact between the plate and the printing surface.
History:
The first lithographic offset printing press was created in England around 1875
and was designed for printing on metal. The offset cylinder was covered with specially
treated cardboard that transferred the printed image from the litho stone to the
surface of the metal. About five years later, the cardboard covering of the offset
cylinder was changed to rubber, which is still the most commonly used material.
The first person to use an offset printing on paper was most likely American Ira
Washington Rubel in 1903. He got the idea accidentally by noticing that whenever
a sheet of paper was not fed into his lithographic press during operation, the stone
printed its image to the rubber-covered impression cylinder, and the next impression
had an image on both sides: direct litho on the front and an image from the rubber
blanket on the back. Rubel then noticed that the image on the back of the sheet
was much sharper and clearer than the direct litho image because the soft rubber
was able to press the image onto the paper better than the hard stone. He soon decided
to build a press which printed every image from the plate to the blanket and then
to the paper. Brothers Charles and Albert Harris independently observed this process
at about the same time and developed an offset printing press for the Harris Automatic
Press Company soon after.
Harris designed his offset printing press around a rotary letterpress machine. It
used a metal plate bent around a cylinder at the top of the machine that pressed
against ink and water rollers. A blanket cylinder was positioned directly below,
and in contact with, the plate cylinder. The impression cylinder below pressed the
paper to the blanket in order to transfer the image to the sheet (see diagram).
While this basic process is still used today, refinements include two-sided printing
and web feeding (using rolls of paper rather than sheets).
During the 1950s, offset printing became the most popular form of commercial printing
as improvements were made in plates, inks and paper, maximizing the technique's
superior production speed and plate durability. Today, the majority of printing,
including newspapers, is done by the offset printing process, although digital printing
has greatly increased in popularity due to demand and cost advantages for low quantity
runs.
Offset printing is by far the dominant form of commercial printing due to its quality
in respect of volume and paper costs, with this market being split between sheet-fed
offset for low to medium volume (any job too large to be economic for laser printer
or digital press, but too small for web offset) and web offset for medium volume
up to the 1-2 million copies market. (For high volume, a rotogravure press is often
used.) The principal difference here is that sheet-fed litho machines are fed with
sheets of paper whereas web offset printing machines (which are larger) are fed
with reels of paper and run at higher speeds; the basic offset printing technology
remains the same. Modern offset printing presses increasingly use computer to plate
systems.
Private or hobby presses, engaged in patient production of limited editions of fine
quality books, often use letterpress as well as offset printing methods, some "purists"
preferring the slightly embossed look resulting from the direct impression of inked
type upon fine paper. These books are sometimes printed from hand-set foundry type
(individual pieces of movable, lead-alloy type). Flexography, a form of letterpress,
is still used in the printing of high-quality premium labels, in ticket printing,
and in envelope manufacturing/printing, though is now no longer the dominant technology.
Color Printing
Color printing is the reproduction of an image or text in color (as opposed to simpler
black and white or monochrome printing). It may also commonly be called four-color
process printing when only the colors cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (also known
as CMYK) are used. Another emerging method of full color printing is six-color process
printing (for example, Pantone's Hexachrome system) which adds orange and green
to the traditional CMYK for a larger and more vibrant color range.
Color printing involves a series of steps, or transformations, in order to generate
a quality color reproduction. Here are the main steps when reproducing a color image
in CMYK print, along with some historical perspective.
The process of color separation occurs when the original artwork is digitally scanned
and separated into red, green, and blue components. Before digital imaging was developed,
the traditional method of doing this was to photograph the image three times, using
a filter for each color. However this is achieved, the desired result is three grayscale
images, which represent the red, green, and blue (RGB) components of the original
image.
The next step is to invert each of these separations. When a negative image of the
red component is produced, the resulting image represents the cyan component of
the image. Likewise, negatives are produced of the green and blue components to
produce magenta and yellow separations, respectively. This is done because cyan,
magenta, and yellow are subtractive primaries which each represent two of the three
additive primaries (RGB) after one additive primary has been subtracted from white
light.
Cyan, magenta, and yellow are the three main pigments used for color reproduction.
When these three colors are combined in color printing, the result should be a reasonable
reproduction of the original, but it is not. Due to limitations in the ink pigments,
the darker colors are dirty and muddied. To resolve this, a black separation is
also created, which improves the shadow and contrast of the image. Numerous techniques
exist to derive this black separation from the original image; these include grey
component replacement, under color removal, and under color addition. This color
printing technique is referred to as CMYK (the "K" being short for "key." In this
case, the key color is black).
Today's digital printing methods do not have the restriction of a single color
space that traditional CMYK processes do. Many presses can print from files that
were ripped with images using either RGB or CMYK modes. The color reproduction abilities
of a particular color space can vary; the process of obtaining accurate colors within
a color model is called color matching. Full color printing continues to evolve
as the industry embraces more technology each year.
Presentation Folders
At Wholesale Printing Direct, we offer presentation folder printing for our new
6” x 9” Mini Pocket Folder as well as the standard 9” x 12”. A printed presentation
folder is a valuable piece of your marketing collateral. We use the 20-micron high-definition
stochastic screening for all of our products, including presentation folder printing.
A print presentation folder should be well designed to include whatever key highlights
regarding your firm you wish to communicate. We print presentation folders with
a minimum quantity of 250, and for orders above 250,000 we offer special bulk pricing
rates. Our presentation folder printing is done with the same excellent customer
service and support that every order receives.
When doing presentation folder printing, there are several tips we offer complimentary
to help you make the most of your presentation folder. First, going with 4-color
on the inside maximizes your ability to communicate your marketing message, and
provides a better looking print presentation folder. Second, consider Aqueous Coating
for your presentation folder printing order. This clear coating is used to protect
your printed piece. It provides a high-gloss surface that deters dirt and fingerprints.
Aqueous coating improves the durability of items as they go through the mail, and
protects them as they ride around in people’s possession. Aqueous gives print presentation
folders a rich, high-end feel!
When selecting a paper for your presentation folder printing, consider going with
a higher quality stock such as our 120# gloss cover for a sturdy and glossy presentation
folder. At Wholesale Printing Direct, we offer the finest quality presentation folder
printing around.
Postcard Printing
At Wholesale Printing Direct, we offer postcard printing in a variety of sizes.
We print post cards in 4x6, 5x7, 5.5x8.5, 6x9, and 6x11 (inches). A print postcard
is a valuable piece of your marketing collateral. We use the 20-micron high-definition
stochastic screening for all of our products, including postcard printing.
A print postcard should be well designed to include whatever key highlights regarding
your firm you wish to communicate. We print postcards with a minimum quantity of
500, and for orders above 1,000,000 we offer special bulk pricing rates. Our postcard
printing is done with the same excellent customer service and support that every
order receives.
When doing postcard printing, there are several tips we offer complimentary to help
you make the most of your postcard. First, going with 4-color on the back maximizes
your ability to communicate your marketing message, and provides a better looking
print postcard. Second, consider Aqueous Coating for your postcard printing order.
This clear coating is used to protect your printed piece. It provides a high-gloss
surface that deters dirt and fingerprints. Aqueous coating improves the durability
of items as they go through the mail, and protects them as they ride around in people’s
possession. Aqueous gives print postcards a rich, high-end feel!
When selecting a paper for your postcard printing, consider going with a higher
quality stock such as our 120# gloss cover for a sturdy and glossy postcard. We
also offer a number of mailing & shipping options for print postcards. We can mail
all or just a portion of your order, via standard mail, first class, or presorted
first class.
At Wholesale Printing Direct, we offer the finest quality postcard printing around.
Give us a chance, and you won’t be disappointed!
Poster Printing and Banner Printing
At Wholesale Printing Direct, we offer poster printing in three sizes including
13x19, 18x24, and 24x36. A print poster is a valuable piece of your marketing collateral.
We use the 20-micron high-definition stochastic screening for all of our products,
including poster printing.
A print poster should be well designed to include whatever key highlights regarding
your firm you wish to communicate. We print posters with a minimum quantity of 50,
and for orders above 100,000 we offer special bulk pricing rates. Our poster printing
is done with the same excellent customer service and support that every order receives.
When doing poster printing, there are several tips we offer complimentary to help
you make the most of your poster. First, going with a larger size maximizes your
ability to communicate your marketing message, and provides a better looking print
poster. Second, consider Aqueous Coating for your poster printing order. This clear
coating is used to protect your printed piece. It provides a high-gloss surface
that deters dirt and fingerprints. Aqueous coating improves the durability of items
as they go through the mail, and protects them as they ride around in people’s possession.
Aqueous gives print posters a rich, high-end feel!
When selecting a paper for your poster printing, consider going with a higher quality
stock such as our 100# gloss cover for a sturdier and glossier poster. At Wholesale
Printing Direct, we offer the finest quality poster printing around. Give us a chance,
and you won’t be disappointed!
Menu
Printing
At Wholesale Printing Direct, we offer menu printing in a variety of sizes. We print
menus in 8.5x11, 8.5x14, 11x17, and 25.25x11 (inches). A print menu is a valuable
piece of your marketing collateral. We use the 20-micron high-definition stochastic
screening for all of our products, including menu printing.
A print menu should be well designed to include whatever key highlights regarding
your firm you wish to communicate. We print menus with a minimum quantity of 250,
and for orders above 250,000 we offer special bulk pricing rates. Our menu printing
is done with the same excellent customer service and support that every order receives.
When doing menu printing, there are several tips we offer complimentary to help
you make the most of your menu. First, going with 4-color on the back maximizes
your ability to communicate your marketing message, and provides a better looking
print menu. Second, consider Aqueous Coating for your menu printing order. This
clear coating is used to protect your printed piece. It provides a high-gloss surface
that deters dirt and fingerprints. Aqueous coating improves the durability of items
as they go through the mail, and protects them as they ride around in people’s possession.
Aqueous gives print menus a rich, high-end feel!
When selecting a paper for your menu printing, consider going with a higher quality
stock such as our 100# silk cover for a sturdy but silky smooth menu. We also offer
a number of folding options for print menus, including half-fold, tri-fold, Z-fold
and gate-fold.
At Wholesale Printing Direct, we offer the finest quality menu printing around.
Give us a chance, and you won’t be disappointed!
Four Color Printing
Four Color Printing is the reproduction of an image or text in color (as opposed
to simpler black and white or monochrome printing). It is commonly called four-color
process printing because only the colors cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (also
known as CMYK) are used. Another emerging method is six-color process printing (for
example, Pantone's Hexachrome system) which adds orange and green to the traditional
CMYK for a larger and more vibrant color range.
Four color printing involves a series of steps, or transformations, in order to
generate a quality color reproduction. Here are the main steps when reproducing
a color image in CMYK print, along with some historical perspective.
The process of color separation occurs when the original artwork is digitally scanned
and separated into red, green, and blue components. Before digital imaging was developed,
the traditional method of doing this was to photograph the image three times, using
a filter for each color. However this is achieved, the desired result is three grayscale
images, which represent the red, green, and blue (RGB) components of the original
image.
The next step is to invert each of these separations. When a negative image of the
red component is produced, the resulting image represents the cyan component of
the image. Likewise, negatives are produced of the green and blue components to
produce magenta and yellow separations, respectively. This is done because cyan,
magenta, and yellow are subtractive primaries which each represent two of the three
additive primaries (RGB) after one additive primary has been subtracted from white
light.
Cyan, magenta, and yellow are the three main pigments used for color reproduction.
When these three colors are combined in four color printing, the result should be
a reasonable reproduction of the original, but it is not. Due to limitations in
the ink pigments, the darker colors are dirty and muddied. To resolve this, a black
separation is also created, which improves the shadow and contrast of the image.
Numerous techniques exist to derive this black separation from the original image;
these include grey component replacement, under color removal, and under color addition.
This four color printing technique is referred to as CMYK (the "K" being short for
"key." In this case, the key color is black).
Today's digital 4 color printing methods do not have the restriction of a single
color space that traditional CMYK processes do. Many presses can print from files
that were ripped with images using either RGB or CMYK modes. The color reproduction
abilities of a particular color space can vary; the process of obtaining accurate
colors within a color model is called color matching. 4 color printing continues
to evolve as the industry embraces more technology each year.
Catalog Printing and Booklet Printing
At Wholesale Printing Direct, we offer catalog printing in two sizes including 5.5
x 8.5, and 8.5 x 11. A print catalog is a valuable piece of your marketing collateral.
We use the 20-micron high-definition stochastic screening for all of our products,
including catalog printing.
A print catalog should be well designed to include whatever key highlights regarding
your firm you wish to communicate. We print catalogs with a minimum quantity of
250, and for orders above 250,000 we offer special bulk pricing rates. Our catalog
printing is done with the same excellent customer service and support that every
order receives.
When doing catalog printing, there are several tips we offer complimentary to help
you make the most of your catalog. First, going with a larger size maximizes your
ability to communicate your marketing message, and provides a better looking print
catalog. Second, consider Aqueous Coating for your catalog printing order. This
clear coating is used to protect your printed piece. It provides a high-gloss surface
that deters dirt and fingerprints. Aqueous coating improves the durability of items
as they go through the mail, and protects them as they ride around in people’s possession.
Aqueous gives print catalogs a rich, high-end feel!
When selecting a paper for your catalog printing, consider going with a higher quality
stock such as our 100# gloss cover for a sturdier and glossier catalog. At Wholesale
Printing Direct, we offer the finest quality catalog printing around. Give us a
chance, and you won’t be disappointed!
Large Format Printing
If you’re looking to get large format printing, then you’ve come to the right place.
At Wholesale Printing Direct, we offer high quality large format printing with affordable
wholesale pricing. With our large format printing, you get more bang for you buck
and can spread your print budget much further. This means you get more printed material
for less, and therefore your marketing dollars are stretched further!
We use 20-micron high-definition stochastic screening for all of our products, and
we’re still able to do great prices, due to our economies of scale and sophisticated
online ordering process. Even though we do wholesale prices on large format printing,
it’s done with the same excellent customer service and support that you deserve.
When shopping around to get your large format printing, there are several tips we
offer complimentary to help you select the print shop for your needs. First, going
with a which uses high quality industry leading equipment makes sense. At Wholesale
Printing Direct, we use 20-micron high definition stochastic screening, and quality
presses made by Heidelberg. Second, you want high quality customer service, especially
during the online ordering process, in case you get stuck. We offer convenient click-to-chat,
as well as toll free phone support. Finally, you want speedy processing and convenient
order tracking. Even though your getting your large format printing at wholesale
prices, you still receive speedy processing and the ability to track your order
24x7!
At Wholesale Printing Direct, we offer the finest quality large format printing.
Give us a chance, and you won’t be disappointed!
At Wholesale Printing Direct, we offer card printing in a variety of sizes. We print
cards in 4x6, 5x7, 5.5x8.5, 6x9, and 6x11 (inches). A print card is a valuable piece
of your marketing collateral. We use the 20-micron high-definition stochastic screening
for all of our products, including card printing.
A print card should be well designed to include whatever key highlights regarding
your firm you wish to communicate. We print cards with a minimum quantity of 500,
and for orders above 1,000,000 we offer special bulk pricing rates. Our card printing
is done with the same excellent customer service and support that every order receives.
When doing card printing, there are several tips we offer complimentary to help
you make the most of your card. First, going with 4-color on the back maximizes
your ability to communicate your marketing message, and provides a better looking
print card. Second, consider Aqueous Coating for your card printing order. This
clear coating is used to protect your printed piece. It provides a high-gloss surface
that deters dirt and fingerprints. Aqueous coating improves the durability of items
as they go through the mail, and protects them as they ride around in people’s possession.
Aqueous gives print cards a rich, high-end feel!
When selecting a paper for your card printing, consider going with a higher quality
stock such as our 120# gloss cover for a sturdy and glossy card. We also offer a
number of mailing & shipping options for print cards. We can mail all or just a
portion of your order, via standard mail, first class, or presorted first class.
At Wholesale Printing Direct, we offer the finest quality card printing around.
Give us a chance, and you won’t be disappointed!