Persons who wish to become printing press operators need mechanical aptitude to make press adjustments and repairs and an ability to visualize color in order to work on color presses. Oral and writing skills also are required. Operators should be able to compute percentages, weights, and measures, and should possess adequate mathematical skills to calculate the amount of ink and paper needed to do a job. Because of technical developments in the printing industry, courses in chemistry, electronics, color theory, and physics are helpful. Technological changes have had a tremendous effect on the skills needed by press operators.
New presses require basic computer skills.
Web-offset presses, with their faster operating speeds, require faster decisions, monitoring of more variables, and greater physical effort. Even experienced operators periodically receive retraining and skill updating. In the future, workers are expected to need to retrain several times during their career. Press operators may advance in pay and responsibility by taking a job working on a more complex printing press. Others may advance to pressroom supervisor and become responsible for the work of the entire press crew.