What is Offset /Lithography printing ?
Offset lithography is the most commonly used commercial printing process for the bulk of desktop publishing on paper. Offset lithography is used on both sheet-fed and web offset presses. The three primary differences in offset printing and desktop printing (such as inkjet and laser) are the colors of ink and the way the ink is placed on the paper as well as the type of machinery used to accomplish the task. To reproduce full-color photographic images, typical printing presses use 4 colors of ink. The four inks are placed on the paper in layers of dots that combine to create the illusion of many more colors. CMYK refers to the 4 ink colors used by the printing press. C is cyan (blue), M is magenta (red), Y is yellow, and K is black, the key plate or keyline color. A mistake often made when submitting artwork for 4-color printing is not converting the images to the CMYK color space. This is needed so that the file can be separated into the four colors so that a separate printing plate ca