When you say the word “printing,” most people think of a small desktop inkjet printer. Printing is much more than just ink on paper. Printing is an art form mixed with science. There are many components to printing. Printing includes prepress operations, paper and ink selection, plate making and the printing itself. Prepress operations vary greatly between print shops, but all aspects are essential to printing a quality book. Before computers, photographers had to take photos of layouts on a board and impose the resulting photos of each page on what is called a flat. The flats would then be used to make the printing plates. Much of the traditional prepress work was mixed in with design and layout. Modern prepress jobs begin with digital layout files of the manuscript and design elements. These layout files are called digital mechanics. These files are then delivered to the press with printed dummy copies of the entire layout. Dummy copies are intended as a general guide and are usually annotated with additional information. The earliest alternative to this process was physical mechanics. These traditional tuners have all dimensions and positions marked on physical papers. Originally, visual elements had to be scanned or photographed as part of a layout. Today, this process is greatly simplified thanks to fully digital photos and illustrations. These files are added to the layout during the design process. Once the files are perfected, the imposition process can begin. Correct imposition is necessary to produce accurate proofs, plates and books from the press. Presses generally do not print on book-sized pages. Instead, presses printing on sheets with multiple pages...... middle of paper...... eventually became the industry standard. To this day, offset lithography will remain the dominant printing method, as it has been for the last century. Works Cited “CMYK Color Model”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Internet. September 20, 2011. Inkjet Web Press 2009. HP, April 2009. PDF. Johnson, Steve. “The Holy Grail of digital printing.” American Printer's Magazine. April 1, 2009. Web. September 15, 2011. Jürgens, Martin C. Digital printing: identification and preservation. Los Angeles: GettyConservation Institute, 2009. Print. Lee, Marshall. Creation of books: editing, design, production. New York: Norton, 2004. Print. O'Brien, Katherine, ed. “Something old and something new.” American Printer August 2011: 21-23. Print."Offset printing." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Internet. September 15, 2011. “Pantone.” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Internet. September 20. 2011.