Prepress LA
Part A: Video Research
- The printing processes described in the film are: screen printing, flexographic, offset lithographic, and digital printing.
- Newspapers, and other non-glossy products not intended to last a long time, use cheaper printing paper.
- Photography and art books are made with expensive printer paper.
- Flexible aluminium, polyester, and mylar are used as printing plates in offset lithographic printing.
- Spot colours are used for making shiny gold and silver areas on a print.
- Digital methods of printing have the advantage of printing a different image on each page of a job, lithographic printing has the advantage of being faster.
- An advantage of flexographic printing is that it can be done on many kinds of media.
- The most common method for drying printed media is oven drying.
- In digital printing the design to be printed doesn't need to be developed into a negative but rather can be printed straight from an electronic file.
- The printing substrate is the medium which the ink is printed on.
- Coloured artwork is separated into four plates for printing because four different colours are needed to print all the other colours.
- Book casing is the process of making the outer part of hard cover books.
- a) A knife folding machine has a knife that slides down the middle of a piece of paper to fold it in two.
b) A perfect binding machine shaves off the ends of folded pages and glues them together once the pages of a book have been assembled in order.
- A guillotine is a device used to trim paper to size after it has been printed.
Part B: Comparing Offset and Flexographic Printing
Offset printing is an older kind of printing that has been popular since the 1950s. Offset printing uses a process where an image is transferred from a plate with an image on it onto a rubber blanket which finally transfers the image to the substrate. Offset printing delivers an outcome that is of consistently high quality and is used very often in magazine production.
Flexography is a kind of printing that uses printing plates that are flexible and put in direct contact with substrate. Flexography was originally of much lower quality than offset printing but there have significant improvements in the process in recent years. Currently flexographic printing is used for things such as paper and plastic bags, milk cartons, disposable cups, and candy bar wrappers. Typically flexographic printing is not used for magazines.
Part C: Word Puzzle
G E E I N K M Y J U G W H Y F I G E D I
M N L R I E N P W R B N E V M H X S E G
B X E T A R T S B U S F I P Q J P N F U
D A C D J E R F K Q T Q R T K B S P T B
D D T A H L I F T M H E R A E C B V E L
C E R E T Q Y D L J S S E R K K H X E A
B I O N H R N L R S S Q D T M H R Q H N
I C P W E G G B I E V W L U E D Y A S K
R I H M Q M O O R S J Y O H I Q H T M E
N N O O M E N P J A Q N F X U Y G L J T
C L T F D S B R T S P U Q O J L E X Z Z
V M O U G E D L T C P Y E X T W U S K A
N H G S W E V E N H E I A E U I U X I I
D G R G V C N E G B A R T S G N N U D B
V J A E S C E R U J D X I C U E X J K C
M H P N I R M N T J I Z J D S X E Q E X
B I H L C C M T D G M P M S E T A L P T
Y L Y S P X U R X J J L H H O E L E G H
U F E R O H A E B C Z L C R F A W D U R
W M X G R I P P E R S Z F Z E D C M I A
BLANKET
DIRECT
ELECTROPHOTOGRAPHY
FOLDER
GRIPPERS
IMPRESSIONS
INK
JET
MARKETING
PLATES
SCREEN
SHEET-FED
SQUEEGEE
STENCIL
SUBSTRATE
WEB-PRESS
Screen Printing
A stencil is made from a mesh screen by first applying a photosensitive emulsion to the screen, protecting a section of the screen from light with an image, and then shining light on the screen. The photosensitive emulsion on the part of the screen with the image on it will not become blocked and will therefore allow ink to penetrate it.
To make a print, the screen printing stencil is placed over a substrate and ink is pulled over it with a squeegee in order to force ink through the holes in the screen. A sharp image results from the screen printing process.
Digitally Printed Fabric
This shirt would most likely have been printed using direct-to-garment, inkjet printing. The process would have been completed with minimal manual handling with a machine designed to print t-shirts after they have been made. There are other methods of printing directly to fabric but they are usually used for things like flags and banners that are exposed to the elements consistently.
Book Cover
There are three components that most likely would have been used in the printing of this book cover. The title and author’s name would most likely have been embossed using a device that has the letters of the words projected from the surface. After embossing, a lithographic printer would have done the colour printing on the front and back. The last stage of printing would most likely have involved lamination in order to put a shine and protective surface on the print.
Typically chocolate bar wrappers are printed on a polypropylene substrate using flexographic printing. Flexographic printing uses flexible printing plates that transfer ink straight to the substrate.
Poster
This poster would most likely have been composed in photoshop before being sent to the printer. To make it work in with standard inks used in printing, it would have been composed in cyan, magenta, yellow and black format. If it was a high budget print run, the poster would have been printed using lithographic printing. If it was a lower budget print job, a digital printer would have been used.
Photo
Traditional photographic developing is a complicated chemical process that involves coating paper with a light sensitive emulsion and exposing the paper to light whilst an image is superimposed on it. These days, most photographic printing is done using digital method printing. Digital photographic printing is done with either “fine art inkjet printing” or with digital laser exposure onto traditional photographic paper. Inkjet printing is economical for small scale print runs and digital laser exposure is good for high quality archival prints.
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