Define Digital Printing
A definition of Digital Color Printing
Define Digital Printing
The most common definition for digital printing is going to be taking an electronic file and going straight to a digital press. This is not entirely accurate because even in offset printing these days you take a digital file and go straight to plate that mounts on an offset press. For this article, we will use the most common definition to discuss or define digital printing. Digital printing can be done in black and white or in color. There are numerous machines that do digital printing. In the black & white you have primarily the Xerox Docutech and the Kodak Digimaster. In the color digital printing arena you have the HP Indigo 3050 or 5000, the Kodak Nexpress and the Xerox IGen3. The concept behind these machines is that there are no costly setups required for a job and so they can run small quantities at much lower costs than offset presses. Once quantities increase over say a few thousand sheets it becomes more economical to run the job on an offset press.
The digital press does run variable data where the image or text can change from press sheet to press sheet. Offset printing will not do this. Digital printing is also usually a quicker turnaround.
Most times digital printing is done by laying toner on a sheet vs ink like offset printing. The only exception to that is the HP Indigo which prints with liquid inks and the DI(direct imaging)presses. The HP Indigo is the only digital press that can print true spot colors versus a CMYK conversion of process.
The quality of digital printing has substantially improved over the last few years. Quality is in the eye of the beholder but for short run marketing or sales literature at a reasonable cost digital printing most of the time will not be discernible by the vast majority of people in the market. My belief is the best quality digital press that is not a conventional offset press is the HP Indigo 3050 or 5000 press. The Indigo uses a liquid ink instead of toner which gives it the closest offset look.
DI(Direct Image) presses which are conventional offset presses that have disposable plates are also an option. They print with conventional printing inks but can not run variable print work. Thus each impression is exactly the same.
About the Author
Buzz Tatom is the owner of The Odee Company Dallas Printing & Promotional Product Company, One stop help for your printing and promotional product needs. The Odee Company is located in Dallas, Tx and was started in 1923. We do both offset & digital printing as well as mailing and fulfillment services.
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