Unique Content Article: What are the Differences Between Digital and Offset Printing?

<h2 class = 'uawtitle'>What are the Differences Between Digital and Offset Printing?</h2><br />
<div style='font-style:italic;' class='uawbyline'>by John Pager</div><br /><br />
<div class='uawarticle'>The growth of digital printing technology has brought technical advancements, more options, and exciting new features to today's commercial printing. It's also brought some confusion. An understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of digital printing and how those compare to traditional offset lithography is critical in making the right choice.<br />
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For high volume commercial printing, offset lithography is still the most commonly used method. The process used in offset printing is to burn the desired print image onto a plate, and then to transfer (or offset) that image from the plate to a rubber blanket, and then to the printing surface. This process works based on the repulsion of oil and water. The image to be printed gets ink from the rollers. The non printing area attracts a layer of water, which keeps the non printing area free of ink.<br />
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A lot of the mechanical steps that are required in conventional printing are not necessary with digital printing. Digital printing eliminates the need for making films and color proofs, manually stripping the pieces together and making plates. So how do you know which method to use? Well that depends on what you are printing.<br />
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Some of the advantages of Digital Printing are as follows: 1. The turnaround time is much quicker. 2. Identical prints. The counts are more precise, as well as less waste and variation of prints. The reason for this is due to not having to balance the ink and water during the run. 3. The cost for small runs is much less than with offset printing. The unit cost might be higher than with offset, but when you include the setup cost, the unit cost for digital is smaller for low volume runs. 4. Variable Data Printing is a type of flexible digital printing. Without stopping or slowing down the press, text and graphics can be easily changed on each piece by using information from a database or external file. For example, mass labels can be printed with different names and addresses on each label. This is a very useful tool for direct marketing and advertising.<br />
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Some of the benefits of Offset Printing are: 1. There is a large range of surfaces that can be printed on, including metal, plastic, wood and cloth. 2. The image quality is very high. 3. The cost goes down as the quantity goes up. 4. The quality and cost-effectiveness are very good in high volume jobs. Digital printing is coming close in the cost/benefit ratio for high quality work, they still cannot compete with the volume that an offset press can produce. 5. Many of today's offset presses are using computer-to-plate systems, as opposed to the older computer-to-film work flows, which is further increasing the quality.<br />
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New Unique Article!<br />
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Title: What are the Differences Between Digital and Offset Printing?<br />
Author: John Pager<br />
Email: kgoldman@heromediagroup.com<br />
Keywords: digital printing,large format printing,offset printing,business cards,magazines,brochures,catalog printing<br />
Word Count: 447<br />
Category: Marketing<br />
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