Printing methods
How paper and board grades are typically printed. 23 grades in the database are usually unprinted.
Offset Lithography
Offset lithography transfers ink from a flat printing plate to a rubber blanket and then to the paper. The plate is treated so that image areas accept oily ink and non-image areas accept water, which is why the process works on a flat rather than a raised or engraved surface.
Flexography
Flexography prints from a flexible relief plate with fast-drying, low-viscosity inks metered by an anilox roller. It tolerates rough and absorbent surfaces and runs at high speed, which makes it the leading process for packaging.
Gravure
Gravure, or rotogravure, prints from a metal cylinder with the image engraved as tiny cells. The cells fill with liquid ink, the surface is wiped clean, and the ink is transferred directly to the paper under pressure.
Letterpress & Relief
Letterpress is the oldest of the relief processes: ink is applied to raised type or plates and pressed directly onto the paper. It leaves a characteristic impression in the sheet that is valued in fine and short-run printing.
Screen Printing
Screen printing pushes ink through a fine mesh stencil onto the substrate. It lays down a much thicker ink film than other processes, which gives strong opacity, special effects and tactile finishes.
Digital – Toner
Toner-based digital printing – electrophotography – builds the image with an electrostatic charge on a drum, which attracts dry or liquid toner that is then transferred and fused to the paper. No printing plates are needed, so every sheet can be different.
Digital – Inkjet
Inkjet printing fires tiny droplets of ink from print heads directly onto the paper. Like toner printing it needs no plates, and high-speed production inkjet presses now print books, direct mail, transactional documents and packaging.
Speciality, Transfer & Decoration
This group collects methods used to decorate or finish paper rather than to print text and images in the conventional sense: hot-foil stamping, embossing and debossing, dye-sublimation and other transfer processes, and decoration printed onto papers that are later laminated or heat-transferred.
Security Printing
Security printing combines special papers, inks and printing techniques to make documents hard to counterfeit. Techniques include intaglio printing, fine guilloche patterns, microtext, numbering and special inks, often on papers with watermarks, threads or fibres.
Traditional & Artisan
Traditional and artisan methods include hand-operated and historical techniques such as woodblock printing, hand-set letterpress, etching and other fine-art printmaking processes.