There are many different kinds of printing available to choose from. One of the most recent developments is digital printing. People are often surprised to discover that this doesn't just mean printing from a computer. Digital printing is a big and important industry that offers some considerable advantages compared to other printing choices.

The kind of printing most people think of as digital printing was invented in 1925, improved in 1951, and then further improved in 1969. On the other hand, real digital printing wasn't invented until 1991.

When is digital printing the best choice?

Although digital printing can be used for all kinds of print jobs, it is especially good for small batch print runs and print runs where you want to personalise some or all of the prints. 

Compared to offset printing, digital printing can cost more per page, but the big exception is where you are not printing a high volume.

When is offset lithograph printing the best choice?

There are occasions where offset printing can be a better choice. When your print run is very high volume, does not need any personalisation, and where the quality of the result does not need to be extremely fine, offset printing can potentially save you money.

Effectively there is a cross-over point where the cost of offset printing is more economical than digital printing. This happens because offset printing requires creating printing plates and it costs quite a bit to create them. To justify the cost of creating the plates, you need to print a lot of copies, or it will be uneconomical.

The actual cross-over point can vary depending on a few different factors, but a reasonable prediction is that it will occur at around the 1000 copy point.

What this means in simple terms is that if your print run will involve printing less than 1000 copies of anything, your costs will be higher than printing the same items digitally, and as the number of copies increases over 1000, offset printing will pull ahead and provide more noticeable savings.

In the chart shown below, you can see how the blue line representing digital printing costs stays at the same cost per copy from first print to last, whether you print just one copy or 4000 copies. The red line representing the cost per copy for offset printing is very different, with a dramatic change in the cost per copy from very expensive down to very cheap.

How does the quality of digital printing compare?

Digital printing allows for very precise control over each dot that makes up the image. This means you can get very sharp, clear images that most people feel look better than other print styles.

The two main factors in determining print quality are the strength of the colours and the spacing between image composition dots. The excellent thing about digital printing is that even on huge billboard sized images, if they have been designed correctly in the first place, you won't see visible "posterisation" in your images.

Posterisation is a term that refers to being able to visibly see the image composition dots. Normally you won't want that.

Previously the one area where offset printing had a clear advantage was in the range of colours that could be printed. Advances in digital printing technology have closed the gap, and so now digital printers can print the full range of Pantone colours and provide lifelike printing results.

Does digital printing take longer?

No, it is much faster. No time needs to be spent on the complicated set up steps that need to be done for offset printing, so you should expect to see significantly faster turn around times on digital print runs compared to offset printing. 

How Your Business Can Benefit

There are so many ways that digital printing can help your business. Like we’ve discussed above, it’s fast and it’s cost effective considering the exceptional quality of the finished result. And because printed proofs are produced on the same equipment that will be used to do the full print run, what you see is what you’ll get when you get a printed proof. 

Businesses can make a bold statement and enhance their prospects whilst reinforcing their brand with professional looking prints. From logos, flyers and portraits to photography, postcards and business cards, the versatility of digital printing is yet another reason why businesses are choosing digital printing over the more traditional methods. 

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