From what I remember, the emulsion is usually "down," meaning that when you look at film right-reading, the surface facing you is the clear film and the back side is where the emulsion is. If you wanted to etch a clear mark in the film, you would do it on the emulsion side. The film is placed emulsion-down on the plate and the plate is exposed.
You remember correctly.
If the film were made emulsion-up (by mirroring the image), the light would spread a little bit through the clear film and create a bit of trapping. If you make two spot color plates that don't have screens, and the colors touch, and there is no trapping in the film image, you could make the lighter color emulsion-up to crudely create trapping.
Correct with negative plates: if the emulsion is up, then it is not in contact with the plate and the black areas enlarge on the plate with hazy edges... thicker is the film between the emulsion and the plate, bigger is the enlargement.
(In the old days of manual stripping, it was the way used to create trapping on positive films, simply by adding a clear foil (or some clear foils) between the negative film and a negative blank film, in order to raise the spreading of the light, and over-exposing to compensate the bigger thickness to be exposed and to make the edges of the spreaded light more efficient.)
But with positive plates (used in europe), if the emulsion is not in contact with the plate, then the white areas enlarge on the plate, and the black areas are reduced... meaning that screen dots will be reduced, and the lower values will be completely "burned" and will not appear on the plate...
Kevin@Kodak said:
Having said all that, I do not know what the actual printing benefits of direct litho are supposed to be - besides the elimination of the blanket.
An example... Some years ago, when I begun in offset printing, the print-shop had a little A4 offset press with only 2 cylinders: plate holding and pressure was done by only one cylinder twice bigger in diameter than the blanket cylinder...
- the plate was hold on the first half part of the circumference,
- and the second half part of the circumference was covered by a steel sheet acting as pressure area (and also protecting the cylinder, like on a GTO's pressure cylinder)...
1° in the first half turn, the plate/pressure cylinder acts as a plate cylinder with its first half:
- the dampening and inking rollers were applied on the plate, deposing water and ink on the plate
(I don't remember if dampening and inking was separated or mixed... sorry),
- then the inked image of the plate reported on (almost) the whole circumference of the blanket cylinder (because the diameter of the blanket cylinder was half of the plate/pressure cylinder, so the blanket cylinder turned one turn while the plate/pressure cylinder turned only half of a turn)...
- and at the end of the half turn of the plate/pressure cylinder, the dampening and inking rollers were raised to avoid touching the plate...
2° and in the second half turn, the plate/pressure cylinder acts as a pressure cylinder with its second half:
- a sheet of paper were brought,
- and pressed between the blanket cylinder and the steel sheet covering the second half part of the plate/pressure cylinder.
But it was possible to replace the pressure steel sheet on the second half part of the plate/pressure cylinder by an offset plate, then an action on a lever made the dampening/inking rollers stay applied on the cylinder during all its turn, inking/dampening the 2 plates successively, and during the second half turn of the plate/pressure cylinder the sheet of paper was printed:
- as usual on its front side by the blanket and its image of the first plate (or "front plate")
- and on its back side directly by the second plate (or "back plate") with "direct litho" system!!!
... and, of course, the "back plate" had to be wrong reading!!!