definitions
Digital Printing
Digital printing has several advantages over conventional printing methods:
- When using digital presses, the content on an application can be changed for every document that is printed, if necessary. Changing the content for each document can be useful for personalizing an application such as a direct mail piece. This method of printing is known as Variable Information Publishing.
- The colour gamut or range of colour that digital equipment is able to reproduce is much larger than that of traditional offset equipment. This feature of digital printing equipment allows for the best possible colour reproduction.
- Digital print applications can be produced in almost any size format. Equipment is available that can print images as wide as 16 feet and larger images can be produced in sections (tiled). After printing, the individual pieces can be assembled to create the entire image. Large banners or images covering walls of buildings are often created with this method.
- Depending on the application, digital printing costs are often lower than conventional printing for the shortest runs because the digital workflow eliminates many of the manual operations of conventional processes. Time savings can be gained in prepress and the make-ready time on digital output equipment is less than conventional equipment. The time savings for short runs makes digital printing a good alternative to conventional printing.
- Using conventional printing methods, large print runs of a document are produced, stored, and pulled from stock as needed. This provides cost savings because the price per document is less on a large quantity than it is on a short run. If changes to the document are required before all of the documents are used, the remainder would have to be destroyed, eliminating the cost savings. With digital printing, there is no need to keep large quantities of an item in stock since it is so easy to make changes whenever they are required. Applications can be printed "on-demand" or "just-in-time" allowing you to print only what is required, when it is required, reducing the risk of having to destroy obsolete documents.
- It can be expensive to purchase conventional or digital printing equipment and to keep the technology current, but the savings in make-ready time and the convenience in using digital equipment help to offset the initial cost and the cost of updates.