Digital Printing has made rapid progress on competition with offset printing systems. Understanding the advantages and disadvantages of using digital printing with offset printing is essential to determine an appropriate choice.
Offset Printing
Is a way of printing for high volume and has generally been done for commercial purposes. Characteristic in offset printing is required the use of Film and Plate print (aluminium Plate) which will be used as media transfer document that will be printed to surface media of paper, plastic, etc .. And the document to be printed is filled with ink from the engine roll.
Offset printing has a high enough price if the printing volume is in the least category, since offset printing requires plates & Movies. One plate represents one document field, one color and type. The more types of documents and colors used, the greater the cost to pay. In addition to plates, offset printing prices are also determined by paper type, color blend, paper size and color quality.
Advantages with Offset printing:
- The prints on the color quality are much more durable (not fade fast) than using a digital print.
- Price Printing in quantity will be much cheaper than digital print.
- Can print on various types of paper media media that can not be done by a digital machine, such as can print in paper thickness up to 400gr, able to print on patterned fields like Samson,
- Embossed / Engrave Paper, recycle paper, can print on paper size up to 100 X 70 cm.
- Can print on relatively thin paper fields as is often used for NCR, HVS & Dorslag Memorandum Books
- Can use ink type Gold, Silver and when printing with Gray gray color (Grayscale) then the result will be much more accurate than digital printing.
- Can print with Full Block ink with sharp and evenly distributed results. Ink block printing is often used for making negative design type.
Digital printing
Digital printing is the reverse of Offset printing process, where the way Digital Print is not required plate and film so that the price is not measured from the material. Digital printing is cheaper than offset printing for printing in small volume. Printing with Digital Print can be completed in a very fast time rather than using offset mode.
The advantages of digital printing are:
- Graphic design that you create can be printed directly as you wish. Guaranteed results will be the sharpness and clarity of color images and writing is determined by the quality of the design that you create. It should be noted that all the designs you create should be in CMYK color format.
- The time required for printing is very short but it depends on the number / number of prints.
- Production cost is cheaper than other printing methods, especially for small quantities.
- Printing by way of digital printing is a way of printing is more environmentally friendly than the way of printing the other because the process of digital printing is the most efficient printing process in using paper, ink and others.
- If you have a relatively small budget, then the Digital Print print option is the right choice for printing in small quantities.
As for the results, there is no significant difference for offset printing and digital printing.