A process of producing a relief image printing plate, the process comprising the steps of providing a photosensitive printing element, quenching dissolved oxygen in the photosensitive resin layer by pre-exposing the photosensitive layer to one or more sources of actinic radiation, wherein the range of wavelengths spanned by the one or more sources of actinic radiation differs by no more than about 20 nm, and imagewise exposing the photosensitive resin layer to actinic radiation to crosslink and cure the photosensitive resin layer. The photosensitive composition typically comprises at least one photoinitiator that is present in the photosensitive composition in an amount sufficient to provide an optical density in the photosensitive composition of between about 0.05 and 0.43 at a wavelength used to pre-expose the photosensitive composition.