DIGITAL PRINTING

How do I benefit from digital printing.

With digital printing you are assured of being on the newest presses, as digital printing is the newest technology. It is also more accurate as when burning plates from film, there was always a bit of distortion, due to the film not always being perfectly flat, thus causing many of the registration issues at the time. Registration, is how the four colors of CMYK blend cleanly together.

What digital printing is and is not

The digital printing offset press offers a better product. The printing plates on older, film style printing presses were made by "contact" burning of the image onto the plate from the film. This created two problems on the film style printing press: 1-the registration of each color was not always accurate and 2-there was a certain amount of distortion created on the plate image due to  warping of the film surface. With digital printing on an offset digital printing press, a laser burns a digital image directly onto the printing plate. This provides   better registration of the plates (colors) and eliminates any distortion that was caused by the uneven surface of the film negative.

What digital printing cannot do

It cannot be a general panacea in every instance, when you are shopping for a printing company. Many people are under the false assumption that by finding a company that offers digital printing, they will be saving great sums of money on their next print job. Any money saved on film output is not major, as the digital files you present to the digital printing company must still be processed through a printing "rip" and plates still must be made. A digital process does not necessarily mean there are not plates still used.

Common types of digital printing

Much of digital printing is on commercial offset presses and they do utilize plates. The digital press simply bypasses the need for film. The  file you present goes directly to plate. Therefore in offset runs, a better term to use than digital would be direct to plate. The Docutech (for b/w) and the Docucolor, as well as the new iGen for CMYK, all use toner and not ink,and are truly digital presses. They take your file and process it directly to the paper. Film nor plates are utilized. Xerox is the manufacturer of most of these machines, but Canon and others make similar ones. Their value is not that they will universally save you money on all of your jobs, but when you require multi page black only documents (books, manuals, etc) these machines are very cost effective. The same is true for low quantity runs on the Docucolor machines. The paper stock these machines print best on is a highly callipered uncoated stock, such as copy bond or laser bond. Gloss coated stocks are not recommended.

The Indigo digital press

Unlike the Docucolor, the Indigo uses inks. Indigo utilizes a rotary drum that spins while dispersing the inks onto a flat sheet of specially treated paper. The Indigos are costly and the paper, due to being specially treated, are also expensive. With Indigo, the benefit is higher quality than toner based systems and it looks "wet", as in standard offset with inks. Toners have a "dry" look similar to color copies you have seen at the local copy center. The basic value of Indigo is speed and the need for low quantity. If you are off to a convention and need 100 high quality prototypes of your upcoming offset printed brochure, Indigo is right for you.

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