One of the side effects of intaglio printing is that the inked surfaces are very slightly raised on the front and indented on the back depending on the type of paper and ink used, this can give intaglio prints a unique texture. The paper is then applied under tremendous pressure to push it into the grooves, transferring the ink where it has made contact. After the ink is spread, the plate is wiped down to remove excess ink from the top surface. Like lithography, it employs full-plate contact-but instead of relying on water to keep ink where it belongs, it uses recesses cut, engraved, or etched into a metal plate (or cylinder) to hold the ink. Intaglio printing (from an Italian word meaning “carve”) predates lithography by more than three centuries.

Although paper is brought into contact with the entire plate (directly, or, in offset lithography, via an intermediate rubber roller), only the inked portions transfer marks to the paper. In lithography, a printing plate (or stone) is moistened with water and then coated with ink the greasy ink adheres only to the portions of the plate with the right texture (achieved in a variety of ways), while the water on the blank portions of the plate repels the ink. The original printing press and its descendants (including rubber stamps) use raised letters to ensure that ink is applied only to the desired portions of the page although an entire block of type may be covered with ink, only the raised parts make contact with the paper. There are several major large-scale printing methods.

Along the way, I learned all sorts of interesting things, but one printing method particularly struck my fancy: intaglio (in-TAL-yo) printing. So I began some remedial self-instruction in printing techniques, determined to fill in those embarrassing gaps in my knowledge. Even after I finally grasped how laser printers work, ink-based printing methods remained a mystery.Įvery time I realize that I’ve been living in blissful ignorance about something so common, I feel sort of guilty-it’s the same feeling I had when I was in high school and knew that I’d studied just enough to get through my exams, but not enough to actually understand or remember anything. But despite having worked in the prepress field for a while, I never thought very deeply about the methods for transferring ink to paper terms like “offset” and “lithography” had no specific meaning to me. And, since I’ve used rubber stamps and stencils, I have an equally vague awareness that any printing process is based on putting ink or other coloring onto some parts of paper while keeping it off other parts. Image credit: Women’s Studio Workshop, via FlickrĪs I look around at the many printed items within arm’s reach-books, magazines, a calendar, posters, checks, labels, boxes, and so on-I am vaguely aware that nearly all of them made their way through a printing press at some point.