Emurse

The printing industry prints products ranging from newspapers, magazines, and books to brochures, labels, newsletters, postcards, memo pads, business order forms, checks, maps, T-shirts, and packaging. The industry also consists of establishments that provide related services to printers, such as embossing, binding, finishing, and prepress services. Commercial lithographic printing establishments, which print a wide variety of products including newspaper inserts, catalogs, pamphlets, and advertisements, make up the largest segment of the industry, accounting for about 31 percent of employment and about 39 percent of total establishments. Establishments offering primarily digital printing, which is the most technologically advanced method of printing constitutes the smallest segment of the industry—about 4 percent of total employment. Much of the work of this segment is characterized by low volume, often done by very small shops. Another segment of the printing industry is quick printing. Quick printing establishments generally provide short-run printing and copying with fast turnaround times.

Printing is a large industry composed of many shops that vary in size. About 7 of every 10 printing shops employ 10 or fewer workers. (See chart.)

There are five printing methods that use plates or some other form of image carrier— lithography, flexography, gravure, screen printing, and letterpress. Plateless or nonimpact processes, such as electronic, electrostatic, or inkjet or “toner-based” printing, are used mainly for copying, duplicating, and specialty printing, and is being used more and more throughout the industry.

Lithography, which uses the basic principle that water repels oil, is the most widely used printing process in the industry. Lithography lends itself to computer composition and the economical use of color, accounting for its dominance. Flexography produces vibrant colors with little ruboff, qualities valued for newspapers, directories, and books, which are its biggest markets. Gravure's high-quality reproduction, flexible pagination and formats, and consistent print quality have won it a significant share of packaging and product printing and a growing share of periodical printing. Screen printing prints designs on clothes and other fabric items, such as caps or napkins. Where letterpress is still used, it prints images from the raised surfaces on which ink sits; the sunken surfaces do not show up on the paper. The raised surfaces are generated by means of casting, acid etching, or photoemulsion.

The printing industry, like many other industries, continues to undergo technological changes, as computers and technology alter the manner in which work is performed. Many of the processes that were once done by hand are becoming more automated. Technology's influence can be seen in all three stages of printing: Prepress, preparation of materials for printing; press or output, the actual printing process; and postpress or finishing, the folding, binding, and trimming of printed sheets into final form. The most notable changes have occurred in the prepress stage. Instead of cutting and pasting articles by hand, workers now produce entire publications on a computer, complete with artwork and graphics. Columns can be displayed and arranged on the computer screen exactly as they will appear in print, and then printed. Nearly all prepress work is becoming computerized, and prepress workers need more training in computers and graphic communications software. Technology has also affected the printing process. In response to environmental concerns, printers increasingly use alcohol-free solutions, water-based inks, and recycled paper.

Most commercial printers now do some form of digital printing. Printing processes today use scanners and digital cameras to input images and computers to manipulate and format the graphic images prior to printing. Digital printing also is transforming prepress operations as well as the printing process. It eliminates much of the lengthy process in transferring print files to the printing press by directly transferring digital files to an electronically driven output device bypassing traditional prepress operations.