(See also David Zwang's related video interview with Kodak's Chris Payne.) 

My introduction to printing was in the “pre-digital” era, and at that time it was thought of as a craft. In fact, if you consider all of the variables that needed to be controlled in the process, it was a highly skilled craft. In my initial exposure to offset printing, you had to balance ink color and formulation, water, plates, separations, screening, machine impression, environmental conditions, etc. When all these things came together in the “ideal” configuration you were able to get some pretty amazing reproductions. At that point, I learned it was all about controlling all of those inherent variables.

The highest print quality of the time was undoubtedly rotogravure, and evidence for this was its use in the production of National Geographic, often thought of as the pinnacle of printing quality. While “gravure,” as it is more widely known, is a more expensive plating process, requiring the expense and time of engraving cylinders for each color and press run, it has fewer variables making it easier to control, and therefore easier to achieve a high-quality reproduction.