A plate handling system provides for movement from storage of a variety of image-ready printing plates, organized in plate stacks (240) with interleaf protective slipsheets. Each stack contains plates of a particular size, corresponding to the capabilities of an associated imaging system. Each plate stack is supported by a pallet (230) , which facilitates easy loading and unloading into the plate handling system. A plate picker (310) aligns with the desired plate and transports the appropriately sized plate to an imaging system. The corresponding slipsheet is transported to a storage area where it is stored with a flat orientation.