A unique characteristic of offset printing is that the image and non-image areas are on the same surface level. The printing method uses the chemical fact that oil and water do not mix to print from a single surface level. In fact, offset printing acquired this method from lithography and thus it is often referred to as litho offset printing as well.

• Sheet-fed Offset Printing Press: In this kind of offset press the printing is carried out on single sheets of paper as they are fed to the press one at a time.
• Web-fed Offset Printing Press: In this kind of offset press the printing is carried out on a single, continuous sheet of paper fed from a large roll. The sheet is then cut into individual sheets of desired sizes.