Digital and Offset Printing
You are at the phase of sending your work out to a printer, but you are unsure of the difference between Digital and Offset printing. We will try to break down the pros and cons of each without the technical lingo. Our new Online Instant Quote capability allows you to select labels and stickers to be printed using the new digital printing capabilities.
Digital Printing: Is the process of using a digital printer to print your materials. Try to imagine your home or business printer and now picture that printer 20x the size.
Pros of Digital Printing
- Faster turnaround on print jobs
- Lower cost short runs compared to offset
- Each print is an exact replica of the first print
Offset Printing: A popular (traditional) technique where ink is spread on a plate then distributed on to the printing surface. There is almost always an up front cost for offset printing. This is because each plate can only be used to imprint one image. Each page of your print material must first be etched on to a plate before it can be printed.
Pros of Offset Printing
- Higher quality prints
- The more you print the cheaper the price
- Ability to run a much higher quantity than digital
Quantity: digital printing on short runs (1,000 copies or less) will be a cheaper solution. For marketing materials that require over 2,500 copies, offset printing will most likely be the cheapest option
Color Variation: Digital printing uses CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) to match colors from your files. If your company needs an exact match with Pantone color, offset printing will be the way to go.
Turnaround: If you need your materials right away digital printing is usually the much faster option. Because of setup times for creating plates, Offset printing turn around is usually 7-12 business days. Digital printing, because there is very little setup time, usually takes 3-5 business days. These times aret typically from the time you place your oreder, or confirm the proof if you asked for one, and do not include shipping times.
Personalization: Digital printing is the cheapest solution for printing personalized marketing pieces, envelopes, business cards, etc. With an offset print, each plate would have to burned with the new personalized message. This is likely to making up front printing costs very expensive.
Quality: Even though digital printing has come a long way, offset printing still has the highest quality prints.
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