Compare offset and digital printing

When order­ing print­ed prod­ucts in a print­ing house, they can offer two types of print­ing — off­set and dig­i­tal. And it is not always clear how one type dif­fers from anoth­er and which one to choose in the end.

Let’s fig­ure out how off­set print­ing dif­fers from dig­i­tal and which one is bet­ter for cre­at­ing var­i­ous print­ing mate­ri­als.

How digital printing works

The prin­ci­ple of dig­i­tal print­ing is very sim­ple — an elec­tron­ic lay­out of a doc­u­ment is sent to the print­er (inkjet, laser or sub­li­ma­tion, depend­ing on the task and the equip­ment used), which must be print­ed on paper, and the device prints it.

The main advan­tage of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy is speed.. Doc­u­ments, polyg­ra­phy, images and every­thing else can be print­ed on paper in a mat­ter of sec­onds. Of course, the spe­cif­ic prepa­ra­tion time depends on the work­load of the print­ing house, pre­press issues, the vol­ume of cir­cu­la­tion and the required post­press oper­a­tions.

In addi­tion, dig­i­tal print­ing is pos­si­ble on ultra-small print runs — from 1 copy. More­over, each item can be cus­tomized. For exam­ple, print five post­cards with a unique recip­i­ent name on each.

And final­ly, you can always quick­ly make changes to the lay­out. Thanks to this, if an error is found after receiv­ing the sam­ples, it can be cor­rect­ed.

How­ev­er, This type of print­ing pro­ce­dures also has dis­ad­van­tages:

1. Rel­a­tive­ly low col­or sat­u­ra­tion, con­trast and num­ber of shades. Although, of course, the spe­cif­ic para­me­ters of “visu­al char­ac­ter­is­tics” depend on the equip­ment used. How­ev­er, the use of off­set in the vast major­i­ty of cas­es pro­vides increased bright­ness and sat­u­ra­tion. Usu­al­ly dig­i­tal tech­nique involves the use of stan­dard palettes — CMYK or 3–4 Pan­tone col­ors. But off­set does not lim­it design­ers and print­ers;

2. Expen­sive copy. More­over, the rel­a­tive­ly high price remains even for large print runs, as a result of which it is bet­ter to print print­ed prod­ucts in thou­sands of quan­ti­ties in off­set.

How­ev­er, if you need to print some­thing urgent­ly or in small runs (up to sev­er­al hun­dred copies), then it is more advis­able to use the dig­i­tal method. But it is worth not­ing that for full-col­or, detailed images with many shades and gra­di­ent tran­si­tions, sub­li­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy, which is not offered in all print­ing hous­es, or off­set is bet­ter suit­ed — and in this case it is bet­ter to over­pay than to get not the bright­est result.

How offset printing works

Off­set print­ing, as the name implies, requires the use of off­set — a spe­cial print­ing form through which ton­ers are applied to paper. And the main prob­lem of this type of dis­play­ing images is long prepa­ra­tion. Off­set needs to be assem­bled, cut, just pre­pared … All this takes time.

But off­set tech­nol­o­gy allows the use of non-stan­dard col­or­ing mate­ri­als. For exam­ple, dis­play an image using a four-tone palette to increase con­trast and detail shades. Or print with addi­tion­al col­ors — “gold”, “sil­ver”, var­nish­es and oth­er mate­ri­als.

In terms of bright­ness and sat­u­ra­tion of fin­ished mate­ri­als, in most cas­es, off­set tech­nol­o­gy is com­pa­ra­ble to sub­li­ma­tion. How­ev­er, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of using addi­tion­al col­ors allows you to apply unusu­al, impres­sive solu­tions.

The sec­ond advan­tage of off­set print­ing is the low cost per print. That is why it is rec­om­mend­ed to use it in large print runs. So, in most cas­es, mag­a­zines and news­pa­pers are print­ed using off­set tech­nol­o­gy.

TNev­er­the­less, office print­ing also has dis­ad­van­tages:

1. Very long pre­press. So, from plac­ing an order at a print­ing house to receiv­ing it, it can take sev­er­al days, or even a cou­ple of weeks, if the lay­out implies dif­fi­cul­ties (the use of the same “metal­lic” paints and var­nish­es);

2. Expen­sive for small runs. Off­set, as has been repeat­ed­ly said above, must first be pre­pared. Because of this, the price of a copy in a cir­cu­la­tion of up to 500 units becomes dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly high­er than with a dig­i­tal tech­nique;

It is impos­si­ble to indi­vid­u­al­ize or quick­ly make changes. Once the off­set has begun to be made, it will no longer be pos­si­ble to change it. So the lay­out must be repeat­ed­ly checked before send­ing.

But off­set print­ing is per­fect for large print runs and the prepa­ra­tion of real­ly impres­sive print­ed prod­ucts.

What is better to choose?

It is bet­ter to build on three para­me­ters — the vol­ume of cir­cu­la­tion, the speed of pro­duc­tion, the require­ments for sat­u­ra­tion and non-stan­dard design tech­niques.

Thus, off­set tech­nol­o­gy is bet­ter suit­ed for large vol­umes, while dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy is bet­ter suit­ed for small-scale print­ing.