Introduction to printing industry

Introdution

to printing

industry

Printed media

• Conventional printing methods

• Offset

• sheet-fed, heatset, coldset

• Gravure

• Flexo

• Letterpress

• Silk screen

• Others

• Digital printing methods

• Laser (electro photography)

• Ink jet

• Others

Products

XXNewspapers

XXXBooks

XXXPackages,

wrappers

XXXXXDirect marketing

XX

Brochures,

annual reports

etc.

XXXMagazines,

catalogues

Colds

et

Heats

et

Sheet-

fed

DigiFlexoGravu-

re

Offset

Placement of printing methods

100 1 000 10 000 100 000 1 000 000 10 000 000

Run length

Qu

ality

Lo

wM

ed

ium

Hig

h

Ink-jet

Electro photo-

graphy

GravureHeatset offsetSheet-fed offset

Workflow in printing industry

• File formats

• Layout programs: Adobe InDesign, PageMaker, Quark Xpress• Design programs: Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Freehand• PDF• Pictures: TIFF, JPG, EPS all in either RGB or CMYK• Office programs: Word, PowerPoint NOT recommended!

Ad agencies

Publisher

Companiesand others

PrinterPrinter’s repro dep.

Finishing

Repro company- scanning

- page assembly

- proofing

- colour correction

and conversion

etc…

- imposition

landscape

camera

RGB image

conversion in e.g. in

Photoshop

CMYK image

printing

PDF/publishing

software

CTP

proofing

print

proof

Image creation

• Images from

• Digital camera

• RGB

• Image banks

• RGB/CMYK

• Conventional camera

• Needs scanning � RGB

• Done usually at repro

• RGB is a device dependent colour space

• red, green and blue

• used for digital images or for colour displays

• eg. scanners and digital cameras operate in RGB space

• CMYK is a device dependent colour space

• cyan, magenta, yellow and black

• used for four-colour prints

Color conversion and correction

• Color conversion

• Changing colour space from RGB to CMYK

• Can be done e.g. by Photoshop or workflow programs

• Needs ICC-profile

• Color correction

• Can be done with RGB or CMYK images

• Changing image white balance etc.

• Correcting image faults (scars etc..)

• Done usually at repro

RGB

image

conversion in

e.g. in

PhotoshopCMYK

image

Page assembly and figures

• Figures i.e vector graphics

• drawings made with

• Adobe Illustrator

• Freehand

• Page assembly

• Combining text, images and figures using

• Adobe InDesign

• Quark Xpress

• (Pagemaker)

• Creating A4 (A3) PDF's

Imposition and plate making

• Imposition

• Done usually at the printer

• Depends on what press is used

• 16/32/48/64 pages

• Special software used

• Plate making

• From imposition layout

Publishing industry - costs

Publishing~50%

Printing~40%

Distri-bution~10%

Paper~45%

Production~45%

Other ~10%

Payed by:

Readers Advertisers

30-70% 70-30%