How does Lithographic printing work?
How does this work you may be wondering. Well the process is simple and it is based on the elementary principle that oil and water do not mix. There are a few steps in converting your image/text into a printed page so let us discuss the plates first. In lithography the plates have a roughened texture and are coated with a photosensitive (light sensitive) emulsion. This emulsion is a suspension of two chemicals that cannot be mixed together, a common household example of an emulsion is butter or margarine. Plates are made one of two ways: Exposure from light source with film on top of the plate, or using a machine that exposes the plate, using lasers directly from the computer. Either way creates a photographic negative of the desired image, releases the emulsion, and transfers a positive image to the emulsion. The emulsion is then chemically treated to remove the unexposed portions of the emulsion. This final step is similar to developing film at a photo lab. When the printing plate is
