If you’ve decided that it’s time for you to get some prints made for your personal or business life, you’ll now be figuring out that there’s more than one way to get that task accomplished. There are about five different main types of printing, with each one carrying its own advantages as well as disadvantages. Properly understanding what kind of work each type of printing produces on top of the efficiency of the machinery employed by those techniques is what goes into figuring out which will work best for you. Some people just want a small number of printed materials as quickly as possible without much regard for overall quality, while others need a high fidelity option that can be placed on just about any material someone could think of.
To help understand what’s out there, check out this quick rundown of some of the more popular printing techniques:
Digital Printing
With digital printing, an image that has been uploaded to a machine using a computer is then transferred onto a physical surface. More often than not an inkjet style printer is employed that uses electric charges to make ink adhere to the surface at differing times until the full image has been reproduced. The ink used does not absorb onto the surface it is being applied to. It instead forms a layer on top of the material. That means digitally printed materials are less durable overall compared to other methods. At the end of the day, this superficial application of ink makes it a poor choice for materials that will be placed outside in the elements. However, smaller projects are well served by digital printing methods since the cost burden doesn’t change very much regardless of the volume ordered. Since the “stencil” of the image is created entirely electronically, there’s no expensive start-up costs associated with digital printing.
Offset Printing
Offset printing makes use of aluminum plates to transfer the ink onto the material in question. It gets its name from the fact that the image is put onto a secondary medium before being transferred to the final material. It does not refer to the image itself being offset in any way. Compared to digital printing, offset printing makes for much more defined edges since the plates have tightly adhered to the material the image is to be placed on during the printing process. The disadvantages associated with offset printing is that there is a start-up cost to having the plates themselves manufactured. After the initial plate creation, however, thousands if not millions of reproductions can be made. For bigger jobs offset, printing is often chosen since the cost scales down nicely with volume while also producing extremely high-quality images.
Screen Printing
With this technique, a stencil is used with ink being forced through a mesh screen to leave an image on a certain material. The images reproduced using screen printing are extremely high quality and have one of the widest available color palettes of any type of printing method. It is most often employed in the garment industry since the ink will actually soak into the material for a high-fidelity reproduction each and every time. The garment industry isn’t the only industry that’s taken notice of the versatility of screen printing, however. Examples of the wide array of applications for screen printing are easily visible at https://thrivescreenprinting.com/, the bottom line being that screen printing is hardly restrictive. Just about any kind of odd material that usually presents difficulties in printing can be easily used with modern screen printing techniques. This ability to use a wide array of different mediums for designs to be put on is what keeps screen printing alive and well far into the age of digital print.
Large Format Printing
This printing method gives away its purpose right in the name. For most businesses that need large scale advertising or private individuals who need customized banners made, large format is the way to go. Prints are fed incrementally into a large format machine to produce one giant continuous piece instead of printing out many individual sheets that are then brought together. For jobs where the size of the print is much larger than usual, large format printing is often the only viable option at all. The only downside to this printing method is that it is largely reserved for flat materials that are meant to be hung somewhere for maximum visibility. Ultimately this isn’t much of a concern for most people who actually need to use the large format as there’s less pressure on having a fancy material used since it’s largely for promotional signage.
LED UV Printing
Now for one of the more modern printing methods currently available, LED UV printing is often employed in things like magazines or pamphlets. How the method works are that once the ink has been transferred to a material, it is quickly dried and cured with the use of UV lights. This gives the ink little chance to run or dry out, which results in a picture quality that is very crisp. Since the ink is dried near instantaneously, more vibrant colors can be used, which can impart a much more luxurious feel to any printed items. The main drawback of LED UV printing would be the higher costs associated with this type of technology. Often times, it is used to create smaller printed material that needs to have the highest level of clarity and sharpness overall.
Conclusion
Most other forms of printing are offsets of these five main printing methods. Choosing which one is right for you involves figuring out what type of material you’ll be printing onto, your overall budget, and of what quality those prints need to be. Screen printing is often used for high volume jobs that require lots of quality an a wide array of materials; digital printing is the main jack-of-all-trades printing that has a similar cost burden regardless of volume, while the other options are mainly for specific niches such as advertising or the creation of promotional materials. Always be sure to shop around both in your local print shops as well as online before settling on any given company as the variance between print shops can be as wide as the techniques they use.
