From a technological standpoint this is the golden age of professional printing, and your printing dollar has never gone farther. The only part of the business people may be nostalgic for is simplicity; as with most features of modern life technology blurs all the boundaries making your choices harder to see. It has a lot to do with terminology...let's see if we can sort it out.
"Up until the past few years, most of the advances in printshop technology concerned the steps required to make a set of offset plates. Further advances are giving us the ability to print without conventional metal plates, or without plates at all. Let's call the range of options conventional offset, hybrid digital/offset, and 100% digital."Conventional offset has been covered in past posts (click here for background). Hybrid digital/offset simply means that plates are laser-imaged inside the press. By eliminating laser-imaging of the plates as a separate step, the "getaway" time for hybrid is shorter and the cost of getting to the first good sheet is low. This is a critical step in getting the unit cost of short run offset printing to an affordable level.
100% digital is a horse of another color, and is extending the capability of a modern printshop to shorter runs:
A modern, production grade, digital printer is really an outstanding piece of equipment. Although the fundamental technology is the same as a digital copier, it makes about as much sense to call them "copiers" as it does to call an IPhone a "telephone". Digital printers produce high quality images at an affordable rate, and the product can be trimmed and folded the same day it's printed. Here are some things you need to know in order to take advantage of this technology.
Make sure your digital printing is done by a responsible professional. Digital printing systems vary A LOT in terms of the color they produce, and the quality of their images. This is partly a machine issue (is it a good one?) but mostly a professional service issue. The people who set up the workflows must have a high level of graphics knowledge, and the operators must take care meticulous care of these fragile machines. The machines should be dedicated to the proper kind of work and not used outside their parameters, where the quality could be degraded.
Insist on a proof copy. It's generally good news that digital printers are calibrated for "pleasing color". However, keep in mind that this is not a hard and fast standard, compared, for instance, with Pantone inks. If you have corporate colors, or you think it's important to maintain consistency across your printed products, this may be a chance to go astray. The only way to know, and decide if color tweaking is called for, is to see a proof copy before you proceed. Be sure to see a proof copy of a digital printing job just as you would for a longer run to be printed offset. This leads us to the next critical point.
"So far, what I'm saying is that you should look for a high quality machine being run by serious printing professionals. The concept is that there is a full-fledged shop there, which uses digital printing in its overall production scheme. This insures that the quality standards are high, and that your job will get the support it deserves."
Give careful consideration as to whether your project belongs on a digital printer. First, nnot every job will fit on a digital printer, so be sure you know the capabilities of the print shop you're looking at. (If your job exceeds 18 inches in width or 12 inches in height you may run out of room.) For example, if your job has a flat size of 22 inches, and you only need 150 copies,you may have to run offset and be prepared to pay many hundreds of dollars for those 150 copies. If you know this beforehand you can decide whether the design or the budget needs to be adjusted. Second, not every paper stock is digital compatible. This is yet another fact you don't want to learn when your job is on deadline.
Finally, don't go digital merely for the sake of new technology. Although digital printing is particularly cost effective in short runs compared with offset, it's not universally less expensive. The lower cost of getting the job up and running (don't need to make plates, remember?) will eventually be overcome by the higher cost per sheet run through. Also, the sheet size is small, limiting the number-up that can be run. Generally, offset will beat digital, price wise, at about 1,000 copies, depending on the particulars.
"As with everything we discuss here, the best approach is to talk to your vendor before you invest a lot of work in your project. Conversations about paper, color, price, and layout can be fun when you're at a preliminary stage. If you're on deadline, and the job is not turning out the way you hoped, the same topics can be painful. They don't need to be."The past two posts have had record setting readership at "Your friend in the printing business" and I'm grateful to everyone who has subscribed, or forwarded the link to friends and colleagues. Please remember that this can be a forum to get your questions answered, and that I will attempt a post on any topic you request.
Hugh Butler
Your friend in the printing business
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