Registration

''This article is about printing. See Registered mail for the special postal service and its associated stamps''

Registration refers to the proper alignment of multiple printed colors. This can range from perfect alignment to extreme shifts in component colors. Bad registration equals bad printing. But this can create something of interest for collectors of EFOs.

Older stamps, generally pre-World War 2, used two colors at most, and were printed in two steps. Usually, there was a vignette and frame in different colors. The vignette would have a clear space around and often purposely made somewhat smaller than needed to fit the frame exactly. This allowed some leeway in getting the parts to align, necessary with the equipment available at the time. This allowance only becomes really apparently when either vignette or frame is shifted way out of position. The extreme situation is when one of the parts is inverted, a true error.

Modern multicolor photo-litho stamps, like commercial color printing, are typically printed using 4 or 5 basic colors all printed at once. Since printing presses are run at a fairly high speed, perfect registration has been an art that needed still better equipment over time. Compare US commemoratives printed this way on the 1970s to those of today. Individual printing colors can be identified by being shifted out of place to varying degrees.

Perhaps the best examples of color shifts can be found on printer's waste, where badly registered colors are the norm and can be quite obvious. 



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