Commercial Offset Printing is the standard commercial printing method used around the world since the 20th century. Also called offset lithography, this form of printing produces the bulk of mass printing production used by businesses and organizations of all types. Offset lithography operates on a simple principle: ink and water don't mix. Image information (art and text) is put on thin metal plates which are dampened by water and ink by rollers on the press. The oil-based ink adheres to the image area, the water to the non-image area. The inked area is then transferred to a rubber cylinder or "blanket" and then onto the paper as it passes around the blanket. The process is called "offset" since the image doesn't go directly from the plates to the paper, but is offset or transferred to another surface as the intermediary. Offset commercial printing presses and inkjet desktop printers both use four basic ink colors: CMYK. Where inkjet printing puts all the different ink colors on the paper in one pass through the printer, in offset printing each color of ink is applied separately - one plate per color. Small dots of the four inks - cyan (blue), magenta, yellow, and black (K) - are deposited in specific patterns that make our eyes believe we are seeing a wide range of colors. That's why the standard offset printing process is often called 4-color process lithography or 4-color printing. Offset printing can also use premixed inks in specific colors including metallic and fluorescent colors, called spot colors, to obtain hues outside the normal color range of process printing. The advantages of traditional commercial offset printing are higher quality and the best cost-effectiveness for quantities over a few hundred, especially high volume quantities. This also offers a lower per unit price and can in turn offer and ensure great finish quality.
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