The Lithographic Process

The advent of the offset press did not change the basic printing process; the image area needs to be oleophilic (“oil-liking”) or hydrophobic (“water-hating”), while the nonimage area must be hydrophilic (water-liking’) or oleophobic (“oil-hating”).

Originally, when stone lithography was employed; Letterpress was good for text, but poor for image reproduction. Lithography was good for images but poor for text.

Books were often printed by a combination of the methods. The term “plate” was originally used to describe medium by which full page illustrations were put into books.

Stone lithography was primarily a “picture-printing” process. This changed and the printing industry was revolutionized by the advent of photography.

It created demand for a totally new kind of printed picture.

It became possible to combine pictures, including photographs, with text, on a single printing plate.

The relationship between lithography and photography was very strong from the beginning. Joseph Nicephore Niepce, a pioneer in photography, experimented with lithography.

Lithography was the first printing process to make its whole plate, graphics and text together, photographically and photomechanically.