There are about five smallish printing presses in Puerto Princesa City. When I say presses, I mean full fledged four colour, full separation professional quality presses of the sort used to print magazines, flyers, posters and the like. What they do not have, however, is any sort of digital colour printing. From a design point of view this doesn't really make sense. How are you suppose to do trials or mock-ups of design projects if you can't print them off quickly and cheaply first before committing to a press job. There are photocopy places but none of these seem to actually print from a CD or USB drive. They just photocopy. The best I've been able to do is to get one of these presses to print some designs for me off an inkjet printer on letter stock. The smallest of the printing presses that I've seen is running a couple of die cast iron machines that are very likely from the 1940s with all the manual crank wheels and adjustments on the side. These machines use plates made from full photographic four colour separations, and are used to print everything from flyers to menus. This seems like a laborious and expensive way of doing things, however it's what they have. The cost of printing this way must be pricey, but coming up with the capital to purchase digital reprographics equipment is likely only a dream.
Petal Printing seems to be the nicest of the presses I've seen. They have several one colour Heidelberg presses and were unloading a new two colour press from a truck when I arrived, sans forklift, with several planks and several strapping lads. These presses are the size of a small van. Petal also has a digital laser printer but uses this for larger print jobs as well and do not really offer commercial small job runs. They are even modern enough to have a direct digital plate setting machine, that eliminates the need for film separations. Most of their presses are one colour only though, which means for full colour jobs, the paper needs to be put through the machine four times. Lots of work. They seemed very helpful, when I went in to ask about pricing, but forget anything like a price list. Everything is worked out on a calculator for each situation. Despite the fact, that at home, full colour presses are only economically feasable for large print jobs, dollar to peso, the presses here work out cheaper than Kinko's. (see more photos)
Petal Printing seems to be the nicest of the presses I've seen. They have several one colour Heidelberg presses and were unloading a new two colour press from a truck when I arrived, sans forklift, with several planks and several strapping lads. These presses are the size of a small van. Petal also has a digital laser printer but uses this for larger print jobs as well and do not really offer commercial small job runs. They are even modern enough to have a direct digital plate setting machine, that eliminates the need for film separations. Most of their presses are one colour only though, which means for full colour jobs, the paper needs to be put through the machine four times. Lots of work. They seemed very helpful, when I went in to ask about pricing, but forget anything like a price list. Everything is worked out on a calculator for each situation. Despite the fact, that at home, full colour presses are only economically feasable for large print jobs, dollar to peso, the presses here work out cheaper than Kinko's. (see more photos)
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