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How Midnight Oil Makes Pressroom Magic by Focusing on the Basics of Lithography

Offset lithographic presses have come a long way, but the offset lithographic process remains what it always has been. Optimizing the process with specially developed inks and chemistry has helped one plant achieve results so striking that they sometimes can be hard to believe. Patrick Henry looks at Midnight Oil, which has specialized in precisely this kind of impossible-dream offset lithographic printing for at least a decade.

Thursday, June 13, 2024

A detail from an image printed by Midnight Oil’s high-resolution, expanded-gamut, vegetable-based, solvent- and VOC-free offset lithographic printing process.

Imagine printing to the most exacting standards at extremely high resolutions with minimal amounts of vegetable-based, VOC-free offset inks and fountain solution in heavy-coverage runs that don’t need press tweaking, spot colors, or drying systems of any kind.

Given these challenges, “imagine” is what most printers probably would have to be content with doing. But not Midnight Oil, which has specialized in precisely this kind of impossible-dream offset lithographic printing for at least a decade. 


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About Patrick Henry

Patrick Henry is a journalist and an educator who has covered the graphic communications industry since 1984. The author of many hundreds of articles on business trends and technological developments in graphic communications, he has been published in most of the leading trade media in the field. He also has taught graphic communications as an adjunct lecturer for New York University and New York City College of Technology. The holder of numerous awards for industry service and education, Henry is currently the managing director of Liberty or Death Communications, a content consultancy.

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