Digital Printing: Is It A Better Method Than Offset Printing?

Image by Claude Mangen from Pixabay

Digital printing is one of the advanced and latest generation printing techniques that are useful for almost every commercial purpose. However, those who are involved in the printing sector know there is another efficient printing method, which is called offset printing. If you have to choose either of the printing technique, then there are various factors that you need to consider.

In this blog, we are going to unfold the difference between offset printing and digital printing, and also explore about its application. In this brief piece, we are going to do exactly that – will put forward the related points in front of you and explain so that you know the right kind of printing technology suited for your particular purpose. So, without further ado, let’s get started.

How Is Digital Printing Different From The Offset And How It Impacts Certain Application?

Now, let’s discuss the real differences between these two popular printing technologies. One may assume that printing is, after all, printing, and either of the methods will do just fine regardless of the application types. That’s not the case, to be honest, and therefore we need to know how these two printing methods work, where they are different, and for which purposes you should choose one instead of the other to ensure better quality, productivity, and cost-efficiency.

Offset Printing

For the offset printing method, some aluminium plates are used. The images, which you need to print, are transferred by these plates to a blanket made of rubber, and finally, that image gets printed on a paper sheet. In layman’s terms, this is what offset printing in short, and it is named so because the ink used in the process doesn’t get transferred to the printing paper directly.

Offset printing is an extremely efficient method after the initial set up is done and runs flawlessly during the operation. Therefore, this is preferred in large printing requirements, such as printing newspapers, magazines, posters, etc. It offers precise colour and clean and crisp looking professional results.

Digital Printing

Here no plates are used like in the offset printing, rather it uses a toner, or in some cases, large digital printing devices make use of specific kinds of liquid ink. This method is useful when you don’t need to produce a large quantity, but want to print just a few. For example, if you are going to invite 50 people on a particular occasion at your home, this job of printing 50 invitation cards will be a better candidate for digital printing. On the other hand, in case thousands of copies of a book or magazines are needed to be printed, offset printing will be far more efficient and economical as well.

One more advantage of digital printing is it is useful when variable data needs to be printed in each copy. As mentioned above, when you need to invite 50 people, you need to print different name and address in each card, and in such cases, the only solution is digital printing. Offset printing will simply be not capable of accommodating such requirements.

Final Words: Why Most Businesses Need Digital Printing?

Businesses do not always need hundreds and thousands of printed copies, unless it is a publishing house or similar, of course, where the requirements can be gigantic. Instead, most companies require a smaller amount of printed materials as part of their everyday activities. Here are some advantages digital printing offers over offset.

• For the short run, the cost of setting up is lower in digital printing.
• Digital printing is the best option when one needs to print a small number. You don’t need to print hundreds of copies to make it cost-effective, you can print just a single document, and it will still be cost-effective comparing offset printing.
• For black and white printing, digital is the more economical method.
• Each copy can have varied data with digital printing, which is impossible to achieve with offset process.

This was the basic information about digital printing, and with this you can easily figure out which one is the best choice for your requirement.