The surface energetic properties of different areas of the offset printing plate are the key factors of this printing process, since they control the ink transfer during printing. The importance of these factors is discussed for both waterless offset and conventional offset. The printing process is highly dynamic. New surfaces are created and their lifetimes are short. From recent theories of dynamic wetting, it has been concluded that spontaneous removal of ink films from nonimage areas is a very slow due to the high ink viscosity and the low dynamic contact angle. Thus it is of less importance.