How are the stamps manufactured?

We lately saw the great characteristics of manufacturing of the coins (metal and method in particular), it is with the turn of the stamps to reveal their trade secrets in this article which will not help you to pack your collection but will pack your culture!
3.5 million stamps is put in circulation each year in France and leaves all only one printing works: the ITVF, Printing works of the Postage stamps and the Fiduciary Values of Périgueux which has the exclusiveness in the production since 1880. This printing works rigorously studies the stamps proposed with the impression and or not decides to put them in circulation. If you are creative and have a little patience (one needs nearly 2 years between the proposal and the publication of the stamp!), you can completely propose your creation. That Ci will be selected, worked over again and drawn by Phil@poste (service in charge of the management of the stamps) and will be put in production. The ITVF, renamed Phil@poste can manufacture your stamps on the basis of 3 technique: - Soft size: Appeared in France in 1928, the soft size is also the technique used for the manufacturing of the tickets of collection and consists in engraving with the hand a metal plate. The metal plates are used then as model for reproduction on print rolls which will manufacture the stamps - the offset printing which is an improvement of its ancestor the lithography. One passes paper, sheet feeder, in large rollers which will come to print the 3 primary colors (cyan, magenta, yellow) and the black, which constitute the base of all the colors of the rainbow. The offset printing is more complicated than the soft size but has the advantage of not comprising the metal plates of the soft size which are more sensitive to wear. - On the principle of the soft size, the photogravure mechanically engraves (and either with the hand) the mould on a plate or a cylinder. Even if the Offset process seems most effective, it is well the soft size which remains privileged, by decision of M.Sarkozy him even set on philately.