Printing services are a process for production of texts and images, typically with ink on paper using a printing service press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing services.

History:

Printing service was first conceived and developed in China. Primitive woodblock printing services were already in use by the 6th century in China. In the Tang Dynasty, a Chinese writer named Fenzhi first mentioned in his book "Yuan Xian San Ji" that the woodblock was used to print Buddhist scripture during the Zhenguan years (627~649 A.D.). The oldest known Chinese surviving printed work is a woodblock-printed Buddhist scripture of Wu Zetian period (684~705 A.D.); discovered in Tubofan, Xingjian province, China in 1906, it is now stored in a calligraphy museum in Tokyo, Japan. Printing service is considered one of the Four Great Inventions of ancient China.

The oldest known Korean surviving printed document is a Buddhist scripture, which dates to 751 [1] The oldest surviving book printed using the more sophisticated block printing service, the Chinese Diamond Sutra (a Buddhist scripture), dates from 868. The movable type printer was first invented by Bi Sheng in 1041 during Song Dynasty China. In a memorial to the throne in 1023, Northern Song Dynasty China, it recorded that the central government at that time used copperplate to print the paper money also the movable copper-block to print the numbers and characters on the money, nowadays we can find these shadows from the Song paper money. Later in the Jin Dynasty, people used the same but more developed technique to print paper money and formal official documents, the typical example of this kind of movable copper-block printing services are a printed "check" of Jin Dynasty in the year of 1215. The world's first movable type metal printing service press was invented in Korea in 1234 by Chwe Yun-ui during the Goryeo Dynasty. By the 12th and 13th century many Chinese libraries contained tens of thousands of printed books. The oldest extant movable metal-type book is the Jikji, printed in 1377 in Korea.

There is little direct evidence, but it is highly probable that the Far East printing services technology diffused into Europe through the trade routes from China which went through India and on through the Arabic world. Johann Gutenberg, of the German city of Mainz, developed European printing service technology in 1440. Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer experimented with him in Mainz. Basing the design of his machine on a wine-press, Gutenberg developed the use of raised and movable type, and from the start used oil-based inks.

The development of the printing service press revolutionized communication and book production leading to the spread of knowledge. A printing services press was built in Venice in 1469, and by 1500 the city had 417 printers. In 1470 Johann Heynlin set up a printing service press in Paris. In 1476 a printing service press was developed in England by William Caxton. The Italian Juan Pablos set up an imported press in Mexico City in 1539. Stephen Day was the first to build a printing services press in North America at Massachusetts Bay in 1628, and helped establish the Cambridge Press.

Early print shops (near the time of Gutenberg) were run by "master printers." These printers owned shops, selected and edited manuscripts, determined the sizes of print runs, sold the works they produced, raised capital and organized distribution.

Early print shop apprentices:
Usually between the ages of 15 and 20, worked for master printers. Apprentices were not required to be literate, and literacy rates at the time were very low, in comparison to today. Apprentices prepared ink, dampened sheets of paper, and assisted at the press. An apprentice who wished to learn to become a compositor had to learn Latin and spend time under the supervision of a journeyman.

Early Journeyman printers:
After completing their apprenticeships, journeyman printers were free to roam Europe with their tools of trade and print where they journeyed to. This facilitated the spread of printing service to areas that were less print-centered.

Early Compositors: Those who set the type for printing services.
Early Pressmen: the person who ran the press. This was physically labor intensive.
Master print shops became the cultural centre for literati.

The earliest-known image of a European, Gutenberg-style print shop is the Dance of Death by Matthias Huss, at Lyon, 1499. This image depicts a compositor standing at a compositor's case being grabbed by a skeleton. The case is raised to facilitate his work. The image also shows a pressman being grabbed by a skeleton. To the right of the print shop a bookshop is shown.

In Prints and Visual Communication, William Ivins offers the following concise history of a series of rapid innovations in image and type printing services at the end of the eighteenth century:

At the end of the eighteenth century there were several remarkable innovations in the graphic techniques and those that were utilized to make their materials. Bewick developed the method of using engraving tools on the end of the wood. Senefelder discovered lithography. Blake made relief etchings. Early in the nineteenth century Stanhope, George E. Clymer, Koenig and others introduced new kinds of type presses, which for strength surpassed anything that had previously been known.

In 2006 there are approximately 30,700 printing service companies in the United States, accounting for $112 billion, according to the 2006 U.S. Industry & Market Outlook by Barnes Reports.

Books and newspapers are printed today using the technique of offset lithography.
Other common techniques include:

flexography = used for packaging, labels, newspapers
relief print = mainly used for catalogues,
screen printing service = used to print on variety of items from T-shirts to floor tiles
rotogravure = mainly used for magazines and packaging,
inkjet = used when you have to print a small number of books, packaging and to print a lot of materials from high quality papers to simulate offset print to floor tiles
hot wax dye transfer = used in industrial applications
laser printing service = mainly used in offices and for transactional printing services

State-of-the-art presses use to mix more printing service techniques so you can have an offset machine with a flexo section for the varnishing of the product they are printing service or a digital printing service unit.

Digital printing service primarily uses an electrical charge to transfer toner or liquid ink to the substrate it is printed on. Digital print quality has steadily improved from color and black & white copiers to sophisticated color digital presses like the Xerox iGen3, the Kodak Nexpress and the HP Indigo series presses. The iGen3 and Nexpress use toner particles and the Indigo uses liquid ink. All three are made for small runs and variable data, and rival offset in quality. Digital offset presses are called direct imaging presses; although these receive computer files and automatically turn them into print-ready plates, they cannot do variable data.

Small press and fanzines generally use digital printing services or always more rarely xerography. Prior to the introduction of cheap photocopying the use of machines such as the spirit duplicator, hectograph, and mimeograph was common.