How does original artwork wind up on the finished folding carton[carton?:carton box sample cutting machine]? In the old days (the distant 1980’s), just about every printer using offset lithography, which will be described below, made films from four-color negatives which were then exposed onto printing[printing?:printing cutting finishing solution] plates, and they in turn were hung (attached to the plate cylinder) on the press, one printing unit for each color. If the customer required a color that could not be manufactured from the basic four (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) and the printer only had a printing press with four stations, this spot color would require a second pass once the first four colors were laid down.
In the modern pre-press room, the need for the intermediary step of creating films is rapidly disappearing. Computer-to-Plate (CtP) technology allows the image (now computerized with desktop publishing software) to be output directly to the printing plate. The next step, in limited use as of this writing, is Digital Imaging (DI), which removes films and plates altogether. A computer attached to the press applies the multi-color image to the paperboard in much the same way that toner is applied to create an image in an office copy machine.
