Printing can be carried out by a number of different processes. Regardless of the process used, the product can be classified by the type of printing required.

[?] printing is where only a single colour of printing ink is used. E.g. black & white, sepia. This type of printing is often done using coloured paper/ card as this is a cheaper method of giving the impression that more than one ink colour is used. Monochrome is obviously the [?] form of printing in terms of cost.

There are two main types of colour printing.
Four-colour Process Printing (also known as [?] colour printing). The coloured image is achieved by overlaying dots of four process colours; namely, [?] (blue), [?] (red), [?] and black (CMYK), to give the illusion of a colour image. A separate printing plate has to be made up for each of the [?] colours as part of a process called colour separation.

Spot Colour printing is a process used where specific colours are required in quantity. It is often used in conjunction with full colour printing. Individual colours are mixed prior to printing. This is a particularly common process where special inks are used such as metallic or clear varnish (spot varnishing).

Checking for Quality
[?] marks are used to make sure that the printing plates align properly. If they do not the image will appear [?] and out of focus.
Colour quality is checked using colour bars, where the density of colour is measured using a device called a colour densiometer.