One to five color,
off a metal plate.

How offset actually works

The artwork is imaged onto a thin metal plate. On press, the plate is dampened and inked — ink sticks to the image area, water to everything else — and the inked image transfers first to a rubber blanket, and only then from the blanket to the sheet. That indirect step is where the name comes from: the ink is offset onto the blanket before it ever touches paper.

It is not a quirk. A rubber blanket presses into the surface of a sheet in a way a rigid plate cannot, so the image sits down properly on stock that has texture to it, and the plate itself lasts far longer for not being dragged across paper all day.

One color to five

Each color on an offset press is its own unit, with its own plate and its own ink. A one-color job is one plate — black, or a single company color. Four gets you full process. A fifth unit runs a spot color alongside the four process inks, so a brand color can sit exactly right on a page that also carries photographs.

Omega runs one to five color offset. Which end of that a job needs is usually decided by the artwork, not the budget: a black-and-white form and a full-color catalog are different jobs on the same press.

Process color or spot color

These are the two ways to get color onto a sheet, and they are good at different things.

• Four-color process — cyan, magenta, yellow and black, laid down as fine dot patterns that the eye mixes into every other color. It is how photographs get printed, and it is the right answer for brochures, posters, postcards and anything with an image in it.
• Spot color — a single ink, mixed to a formula before it goes in the fountain and laid down solid. Nothing is being simulated, so the color is the same this run as it was last run. That is what a company identity and a logo want.

Cost follows the number of units, not the amount of ink. A two-color job in two spot colors uses two plates and two units; the same job in process uses four of each. For a letterhead, a form or a two-color identity piece, spot is usually both better looking and cheaper. For a photograph, there is no substitute for process.

The presses

Three Heidelberg 14 × 20 sheet-fed presses do most of the work: a GTOF five color, a GTOVP four color perfector and a GTOVP two color perfector. Alongside them, a Sakurai two color 28″, two Ryobi 11 × 17s (one two color, one single color) and a pair of AB Dick envelope feeders for work that prints on the envelope itself.

A perfector is worth understanding before you price a two-sided job. An ordinary press prints one side of the sheet; the stack then has to dry, be turned, and be made ready all over again for the back. A perfector turns the sheet inside the press and prints both sides in one pass. One pass, one make-ready, no drying wait in the middle — which is exactly why a two-sided job does not simply cost twice a one-sided one.

Soy-based inks and plates that go back on the press

Omega uses only environmentally friendly soy-based inks. And the plates are metal, so they can be reused rather than thrown away — unlike printers running disposable paper or plastic plates, where every job's plates are consumed and billed.

Both of those are quiet, practical things rather than a campaign. Reusable plates keep material cost and material waste down at the same time, which is the only kind of environmental claim worth printing.

When offset beats digital, and when it does not

The honest answer is that it depends on three things, and quantity is only the first of them.

• Quantity. Offset carries a fixed cost up front — plates and make-ready — and then a very low cost per sheet. Digital carries almost no set-up and a flat cost per sheet. Plot both and they cross. Below the crossover, digital wins; above it, offset wins, and it keeps winning by more the longer the run gets.
• Spot color. A toner press builds every color out of its four process toners. If a brand color has to be exact, it wants a spot ink on an offset unit.
• Stock. Offset takes a wider range of paper than a toner press will feed and fuse — heavier, more textured, more unusual.

If the run is short and the color is ordinary, say so and we will point you at digital printing instead. Whatever the job runs on, the finishing happens in the same building — see bindery for folding, stitching, coiling and cutting.