Offset printing is a printing technique that involves the transferring of an image from a metal plate to a rubber blanket or rollers before being printed on the receiving media, usually paper. In this method, the paper does not come in direct contact with the metal plates.
Offset printing is also known as offset lithography.
Offset printing helps in producing high-quality output on surfaces like cloth or wood. The rubber leaves a very fine print on rough surfaces, making the process effective. The process is equally efficient for small, medium and large-scale production of printing due to its high quality, inexpensiveness and consistent results.
The publication industry uses two main kinds of printing techniques for bulk printing. One is the sheet-fed offset printing method, where each sheet is fed into the machine individually, and they are cut before the printing process. The other process, web offset printing, takes in rolls of paper and prints onto it. The pages are trimmed and assembled afterwards. This method is used for bulk printing of media whose content changes regularly, such as newspapers, because it is a cost effective method.
There are two types of offset printing machines in common use for publication today: sheet-fed offset printing and web offset printing. In sheet-fed offset printing, individual pages of paper are fed into the machine. The pages can be pre-cut to the final publication size or trimmed after printing. In web offset printing, larger, higher-speed machines are used. These are fed with large rolls of paper and the individual pages are separated and trimmed afterwards. Sheet-fed offset printing is popular for small and medium-sized fixed jobs such as limited-edition books. Web offset printing is more cost-effective for high-volume publications whose content changes often, such as metropolitan newspapers.
