Printing is printing be it using digital or offsets, so you may wonder the reason for differentiating digital printing to offset printing. If you have an online printing business selling brochures, business cards, custom apparel, leaflets, photo, and promotional products, you know you will have to create a print-ready design, layout, copy, color scheme, etc.
Digital Printing vs Offset Printing
All these can be done using web-to-print software easily. But you may wonder which printing technique should be preferred either digital or offset. So to make it easier for you to select the best-suited technique for your business, we have covered the major factors, benefits, and drawbacks of both of them. Stick till the end of the article and you will be taking your decision easily. How digital printing differs from offset printing?
Offset Printing:
Offset printing technology uses plates of aluminum to transfer the image onto a rubber “blanket”. The reason for offset being called offset is that ink is not directly applied to the print surface but is first transferred to the cylinder. These laser-etched plates affixed to the plate cylinder roll the ink in the shape of an image.
Benefits of offset printing:
- High-quality images which are distinct and clean without any streak or spots.
- Versatile and work well with every kind of material.
- Good color fidelity: Images with a perfect blend of balance in design and accuracy of colors.
- Better value for your money on large volume jobs. A good investment option with a high return on investments.
Few Drawbacks:
- High cost for small volume jobs.
- Time-consuming setup.
- In case of error, the process starts from beginning again.
Digital Printing:
Digital printing excludes all the mechanical steps and techniques like rubber, proofs, and plates. It directly applies the design on the printing surface with liquid ink or powdered toner. Different digital printing businesses may have different sizes of machines but the purpose of all is .’the same.
Benefits of digital printing:
- Fewer odd variations making each print identical.
- Economical for small volume jobs.
- Quick turnaround time.
- Easy to make changes within a single printing job.
Few Drawbacks:
- Not compatible with all materials.
- High cost for large-volume jobs.
- Lower quality crispness, and sharpness.
- Less color fidelity.
Consider these factors before choosing a printing process.
Depending on the type of your business, amount of work, and different prices, web to print will yield different results with both of these printing techniques. However, before deciding which technique you should select, consider these important factors:
- Size of the sheet: Digital printing allows the sheet size of 19 inches and
- 29 inches whereas offset printing allows the sheet size of 29 inches and 40 inches. So if you sell large-size banners and posters, prefer the offset printing technique.
- Shorter runs: Offset printing costs less in bulk jobs and more for smaller jobs as it requires more materials and more machinery setup. So for smaller jobs prefer digital printing and for large volume, jobs prefer offset printing.
- Materials required: Digital printing uses a limited number of papers and ink types and surface finishes. If you need a variety of ink types prefer the offset technique.
- Turnaround time: Digital printing takes less setup time than offset. If you believe in delivering fast results to your customers, choose wisely.
- Customization: If your customer requires different names on invites or business cards, go with the digital technology as changing information in a digital file is easier.
- Sample: If you wish to see first how your copy will look after being printed, choose the digital printing technique as plates in offsets are expensive.
- Speed: For a rush project or to create business cards in minutes, nothing can beat the speed of digital printing. For a long-print run with no personalizations, offset printers once set up usually run faster.
- Additional processes: If you wish to print special processes like foil stamping, embossing, or special coatings, offset printing is more suited for it as digital printing is not much receptive to the heat and pressure of foil stamping.
Do inkjet printers offer more advantages than electrophotographic printers?
This is the question you have to answer yourself according to your business requirements. In past years, significant growth is seen in the usage of inkjet printing in web 2 print company due to these reasons:
- Accuracy: With inkjet printing, customers can easily place an order on a small batch of items without altering the quality or overall costs. Though it may take more time than a laser printer, warm-up time is very low. This makes the process of receiving documents and printing faster.
- Customization: Getting high-quality images is the perfect reason to buy inkjet printers. Using them, we can create bright, and lively images with perfect tone and shading.
- Size: The size of the inkjet printers is more compact than a laser printer with almost similar print quality.
- Price: Inkjet models are comparatively cheaper than laser printers. The cherry on the top of the cake is that these printers are multifunctional giving you better ROI.
- Advanced technology: More online printing businesses are using inkjet printing as it has integrated manufacturing methods, one-pass operation completions, and linking prepress with printing.
Besides, you can set up both online and physical stores to earn profit from both the end.
The best part about selling online is you do not need to rent a place at a good location, which eats up a lot of your capital.
However, you need to spend some money on building t-shirt design software online with your website and building your brand.
Still, you need a complete guideline to take a few steps when starting an online custom t-shirt printing store.
The t-shirt printing software facilitates design drawing on a blank t-shirt to create t-shirt mockups.
Moreover, the software lets you see how the t-shirt is going to look before printing it, which saves a lot of your cost and labor.What features to look for when choosing T-shirt design software?The t-shirt designing software has revolutionized the whole industry.
Knowle Photographic offers a wide range of stylish unique custom personalized photo gifts that your loved ones will truly appreciate.
As a digital printing company that provides digital printing services in Brisbane, we are more than capable of bringing you a comprehensive, detailed blog for your benefit.
It is vital to consider a particular managed printing service instead of randomly choosing the ones you have been told is better over the rest.
For the right decision to be made, it must be a knowledgeable decision.
Once you are done going through this blog, you will make impactful and well-informed decisions when choosing digital printing and reap the benefits of Digital Printing.
Let us begin with the basics and take one step each from there.What is Digital Printing?Unlike traditional offset printing, digital printing is a print production method that uses electronic files from your flash drive, computer, and phone is printed directly onto the chosen material.Usually, a digital printer is utilised by professional printers for small-scale production and large-format or high-volume laser printers or inkjet printers that can be used as other sources to print.With digital printing, you have more flexible options and more creativeness to bring forward and broaden your avenues of communicating with your clients with crisp, clean, and trendy designs.The benefits of digital printing are many.
But one of them is how easily one can print on synthetics, photo paper, paper, canvas, cardstock fabric, to name a few substrates.Digital Color Printers use electrophotography (laser), Inkjet, or Xerography to develop the images with toners, dry-ink, or dyes.What is the Process Involved in Digital Printing?The process involved in printing documents using a digital printer is quite simple:Choose the print option and customise the settings as per your requirements, including orientation, two sides, one side, paper type, to name a few.The printer driver on your computer understands and translates those settings while sending the file to the printer.Once the printer receives the data and instructions given (your preferences), it digitally prints the documents in almost no time.How does Digital Printing Work?The digital colour printers utilise Inkjet, or electrophotography (Lasers) to develop the images with toners, dyes or dry-ink.With Inkjet printers, one can develop definite images with quality photographic colours.
