Production occupations make up 52.3 percent of industry employment. Prepress technicians and workers prepare material for printing presses. Included among their tasks are: Composing text; designing page layout incorporating text, photographs and illustrations, and advertisements, if any; and making printing plates of the pages. Increasingly, prepress technicians receive the material for the pages as electronic computer files, which they load into their computers, and use digital imaging software to layout the pages. "Preflight" technicians examine and edit the pages to ensure that the design, format, settings, quality and all other aspects of the automated desktop work are acceptable, and that the finished product will be completed according to the client's specifications before it is printed.

Printing plants that use older technology, which are declining in number, may still employ people in older, manual occupations. These include typesetting and composing machine operators to prepare text. Camera operators start the process of making a lithographic plate by photographing and developing negatives of the material to be printed. Scanner operators employ electronic or computerized scanning equipment to produce and screen film separations of photographs or art to use in lithographic printing plates. Operators review all work and adjust the equipment if they need to make corrections to the original. Lithographic dot etchers retouch negatives by sharpening or reshaping the images on the negatives. They work by hand, using chemicals, dyes, and special tools. Film strippers cut the film to required size and arrange and tape the pieces of negatives onto "flats," or layout sheets, used to make press plates. Platemakers produce printing plates by exposing sensitized metal sheets to special light through a photographic negative. Some platemakers operate machines that process the plates automatically. In letterpress and gravure printing, photoengravers photograph copy, develop negatives, and prepare photosensitized metal plates for use.

When the material is ready, Printing machine operators install and adjust the printing plate on the press, mix fountain solution, adjust pressure, ink the printing presses, load paper, and adjust the press to paper size. Operators also must correct any problems that might occur during a press run. Job printers, who usually work in small print shops, perform the prepress work as well as operate the press.
 

During the binding or postpress stage, the printed sheets are transformed into products such as books, catalogs, magazines, or directories. Bookbinders assemble books from large, flat, printed sheets of paper. They cut, saw, and glue parts to bind new books and perform other finishing operations, such as decorating and lettering, often using handtools.

A small number of bookbinders work in hand binderies. These highly skilled workers design original or special bindings for publications with limited editions, or restore and rebind rare books. In many other shops, bindery workers fold and fasten groups of sheets together, often using a machine stapler, to make "signatures." They then feed the signatures into various machines for stitching or gluing. More of these workers are now using computers on the job, and consequently must learn new skills to operate the more complex machinery.

In addition to these specialized printing occupations, office and administrative support workers, marketing and sales workers, workers in professional and related occupations, and management, business, and financial operations workers also are employed in the printing industry. One occupation becoming more common is customer service representative; workers in this job track the various processes of production and act as liaison between clients and technicians. The representative ensures the customer's satisfaction with the timely delivery of a high-quality product. Also important are graphic designers, who use a variety of print and film media to create and execute art that meets a client's needs. They increasingly use computers to lay out and test various designs, patterns, and colors before printing a final design.