Rotogravure (roto or gravure for short) is a type of intaglio printing process, in that it involves engraving the image onto an image carrier. In gravure printing, the image is engraved onto a copper cylinder because, like offset and flexography, it uses a rotary printing press. The vast majority of gravure presses print on reels of paper, rather than sheets of paper. (Sheetfed gravure is a small, specialty market.)Rotary gravure presses are the fastest and widest presses in operation, printing everything from narrow labels to 12 feet (4 m)-wide rolls of vinyl flooring.Additional operations may be in-line with a gravure press, such as saddle stitching facilities for magazine/brochure work. Once a staple of newspaper photo features, the rotogravure process is still used for commercial printing of magazines, postcards, and corrugated (cardboard) product packaging. Gravure is an industrial printing process mainly used for the high-speed production of large print magazines and runs at a constant and top quality, such as in the printing of large numbers of magazines and mail order catalogs.Other use for the gravure processes are in wallpapers and laminates for furniture where quality and consistency are desired. Gravure cylinders nowadays are typically engraved digitally by a diamond tipped or laser etching machine. On the gravure cylinder, the engraved image is composed of small recessed cells (or ‘dots’) that act as tiny wells. Their depth and size control the amount of ink that gets transferred to the substrate (paper or other material, such as plastic or foil) via a process of pressure, osmosis, and electrostatic pull. (A patented process called “Electrostatic Assist” is sometimes used to enhance ink transfer.)Gravure is capable of transferring more ink to the paper than other printing processes, gravure is noted for its remarkable density range (light to shadow) and hence is a process of choice for fine art and photography reproduction, though not typically as clean an image as that of sheet fed litho or web offset litho.Gravure is widely used for long-run magazine printing in excess of 1 million copies. Gravure’s major quality shortcoming is that all images, including type and “solids,” are actually printed as dots, and the screen pattern of these dots is readily visible to the naked eye. Examples of gravure work in the United States are typically long-run magazines, mail order catalogs, consumer packaging, and Sunday newspaper ad inserts.