in an apparatus for feeding printing plates to a plate cylinder of a printing press , the printing plate is prealigned on stops outside the plate cylinder with a lateral offset and with an oblique skew . then the printing plate is fed , in the thusly aligned position to the register pins of the plate cylinder , wherein the printing plate is finally aligned by lateral displacement and by a pivoting movement about the first register pin , until the printing plate bears with its receptacles against both register pins .