The Printing Press
From woodblock to 3D — 1,800 years of putting ink on paper. See how halftone dots fake continuous tone, how CMYK plates combine into full color, and explore 36 artifacts across five printing eras.
How Newspapers Print Photos
Halftone: an ancient trick for printing continuous tone with only one ink. The eye averages tiny dots of varying size into apparent grays. Adjust the screen ruling (lines per inch) and angle to see how quality scales — newspapers run 65–85 lpi; fine-art reproductions run 175–200.
The Collection
36 artifacts from Bi Sheng's clay moveable type to 3D printing — eighteen centuries of putting marks on a substrate. Click any card to copy its description.
No artifacts in this category.
From Bi Sheng to Desktop Publishing
Milestones from 220 AD to 1995 — printing's long evolution from Buddhist texts to Mac + PostScript + LaserWriter.
Hands-on Instruments
Hands-on tools for halftone dots, CMYK color separation, and the arcane units of traditional typography.
Adjust the input tone and dot percentage to see how halftone rendering translates a continuous gray into a pattern of dots.
Drag each plate's percentage to see how cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (black) combine to produce every printable color. Each plate is rendered at its traditional screen angle: 105° / 75° / 90° / 45° — picked specifically to avoid moiré patterns.
Type measurement is quirky: 72 points to the inch (since the 1980s), 12 points to the pica, and 1 em equals the current font size. Convert between them — and see how big they actually are.