Direct Marketing - The Methods to Carry Film Through a Printing Press to Prevent Stretching
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Film is an intermediate step in the process of getting a document printed on a commercial printing press. After the design and layout phase, the document is separated into four pieces of film, each representing one of the printing colors: cyan, magenta yellow or black. After the film is created, individual printing plates are made from each sheet of film, which in turn are used on the individual ink stations of a four-color printing press.
Creation of Film
Film is created in desktop publishing in the same way that slides were created before the advent of computers. Film does not make prints in commercial printing; film is used to make the printing plates. Film also does not stretch as it's like film negatives. Most recently, however, direct-to-plate prepress systems have done away with the need for film separations altogether.
Film Characteristics
Imagine a black-and-white negative. It's only shades of black that are actually in the negative; white is the absence of color. Film for printing replaces those black shades with red, cyan (bluish) and yellow hues, in addition to black. The various color components of what the human eye sees are blended in CMYK, or four-color printing, to create the myriad colors that appear in any color, printed document. Stretching of film is never an issue; since the film isn't used in the final printing.
Direct-to-Plate
Direct-to-plate systems use computer technology to bypass the film stage. Printers got bigger and what these specialized printers "print" are printing plates. The workstations were powerful, graphic workstations that have continuously gotten smaller, until now, PCs and Macs that are closer to supercomputers than the original PCs of old, have the processing sophistication to generate the output to create printing plates in the four colors that were formerly the province of film.
Printing Film History
In the days before desktop publishing software, stripping was a craft performed by people. They prepared the film separations for making the printing plates. They cut out and taped sections of film to create the composed film, from which a stat camera would produce the film. That film was a large version of any negative that has ever come back with photo prints; its size corresponds to the size of the individual ink stations on a particular commercial printing press.
Tags:
Direct Marketing, Marketing
Creation of Film
Film is created in desktop publishing in the same way that slides were created before the advent of computers. Film does not make prints in commercial printing; film is used to make the printing plates. Film also does not stretch as it's like film negatives. Most recently, however, direct-to-plate prepress systems have done away with the need for film separations altogether.
Film Characteristics
Imagine a black-and-white negative. It's only shades of black that are actually in the negative; white is the absence of color. Film for printing replaces those black shades with red, cyan (bluish) and yellow hues, in addition to black. The various color components of what the human eye sees are blended in CMYK, or four-color printing, to create the myriad colors that appear in any color, printed document. Stretching of film is never an issue; since the film isn't used in the final printing.
Direct-to-Plate
Direct-to-plate systems use computer technology to bypass the film stage. Printers got bigger and what these specialized printers "print" are printing plates. The workstations were powerful, graphic workstations that have continuously gotten smaller, until now, PCs and Macs that are closer to supercomputers than the original PCs of old, have the processing sophistication to generate the output to create printing plates in the four colors that were formerly the province of film.
Printing Film History
In the days before desktop publishing software, stripping was a craft performed by people. They prepared the film separations for making the printing plates. They cut out and taped sections of film to create the composed film, from which a stat camera would produce the film. That film was a large version of any negative that has ever come back with photo prints; its size corresponds to the size of the individual ink stations on a particular commercial printing press.
