Stripping is a dying trade in which film negatives are arranged in a pattern, which will create a series of pages. There is an individual negative for each color to be printed on a printing press

Printing press

A printing press is a device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium , thereby transferring the ink...

. Colors are arranged in order to fit together with the other colors to be printed. This process has generally been eliminated through the use of digital prepress, in which imposition

Imposition

Imposition is one of the fundamental steps in the prepress printing process. It consists in the arrangement of the printed product’s pages on the printer’s sheet, in order to obtain faster printing, simplified binding and less waste of paper....

 software is used to "digitally strip" the pages together. The digital product of this software can be outputted to an imagesetter

Imagesetter

An imagesetter is an ultra-high resolution large-format computer output device. It exposes rolls or sheets of either photographic film or bromide paper to a laser light source. Once the film or paper is developed, a very high quality black and white image is revealed...

 that creates larger piece of film, or directly to a platesetter

Platesetter

A platesetter is a machine which receives a raster image from a raster image processor and in turn, creates a lithographic plate suitable for use on an offset press....

which generates a plate that can go directly to press.