Roller printing is another famous process of printing. The earliest roller printing machines were developed in 1783. However roller printing is a developed from block printing which was used by early civilisations. In roller printing the area of the design to be printed is engraved either manually or chemically, onto copper rollers. A seperate roller is needed for each color in design upto a maximum of 16 rollers, color seperations. The engraved roller is rotated in color paste and the excess of color is removed by a blade.  Color remains only in the sudden areas. The roller is then pressed onto the cloth.

The regestration of one roller to the other designs is critical to the finished appearence. The size of the roller printed designs is limited by the circumfrance of the rollers. Roller printing is fast, accurate and economical. The cost of selling up new designs is high, so large quantities of fabric in each design are normally produced.