Offset Printing

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What Does Offset Printing Mean?

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.

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Offset printing is also known as offset lithography.

Techopedia Explains Offset Printing

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.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist
Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.