Digital Printing vs Traditional Printing

We could not imagine life without the technology of printing. It is obvious that this technology makes our lives easier, as it represents a great ease to produce reading materials, such as newspapers, magazines or books in large numbers for the masses.

Throughout the years, printing methods have changed and they have been replaced by more effective ones.

Today, digital printing is widely spread, because of the quality and the variety of styles that it offers. There are different ways of producing a digital representation of an image: there are inkjet, laser and toner and magnetic digital printers.

We might think that everybody prefers the digital printing technique, because it is more practical, innovative and it also eliminates the usual mechanical steps that have to be followed in the case of traditional offset lithography, such as making films or manually putting pieces together.

Even though it is hard to believe, offset lithography presents some very attractive features too. For example, we can get a high image quality using a traditional printer too and the costs are low. The printing can be made on a large variety of materials: wood, paper, metal, plastic or cloth.

The greatest advantage of digital printing is the fact that every print is the same, because during the press run, the ink and the water do not need to be balanced. As in the case of traditional offset printing, the quality is very good and it is not expensive, especially if we refer to low volume printing. What is interesting, is that offset printing offers a larger variety of materials to print on, than the digital one. In the mean time, digital printing, is faster than the traditional one.

We have come to the conclusion that both printing methods present a lot of advantages and it cannot be stated that only of them can be considered the right option for us, but on the contrary: they are both very good and effective ways of printing and our choice depends on our needs.

Some people might put the emphasis on the quality and  the clarity of the image, while some others might be interested in the variety of colors and nuances that each printing method can provide.