Digital Printing And Offset Printing

The printing process has come a long way since the invention of the printing press. Today, the most popular printing methods are offset and digital. Today we will take a look at the difference between the two printing methods.

About offset printing

Offset printing was invented in 1875 and is still widely used today. To offset a full-color project, the process requires separate metal plates for each of the four primary ink colors: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. If you want to print both sides of the page, you will need four plates per side. Each metal plate is laser etched with the image and text to be printed on it, as well as negative space around each image and letter. Next, each printing plate is carefully processed to make the part to be printed ink-absorbing and water-repellent, and the negative space to be water-absorbing and ink-repellent. Each plate is then filled with liquid ink and water. Water repels ink and vice versa, keeping the negative space of each image free of ink. This process ensures scripts, clean lines, text and images.

Because the printing plate transfers the ink to the blanket rather than directly to the printing surface, it is called offset printing. Offset printing requires a lot of expertise to set up. However, once set up, offset printing will be very efficient and provide excellent results. Although offset printing is too expensive for small batch printing, offset printing is still widely used for large quality printing.

About digital printing

Digital printing was introduced in 1989. Unlike offset printing, digital printing does not require a metal plate or blanket. Instead, digital-based images are printed directly onto a variety of paper or cardstock. Initially, the quality of digital printing was far behind offset printing. Because digital printing uses red, green, and blue instead of four-color printing, the resulting color print is not as accurate as the color matching offered by offset printing. And digital print output is largely size-constrained. But digital printing has sparked a revolution! Digital printing ushered in the era of desktop publishing, putting the ability to design and produce attractive, professional-looking flyers, reports and cards into the hands and home of individuals. While not high quality, digital printing is fast and ideal for printing large volumes of sheetfed and small batches that offset printing cannot.

Through the above introduction, we understand that offset printing and digital printing have different characteristics. As for which method to choose when printing, you need to choose the most suitable factor according to your actual needs.