Difference between offset and digital printing. Offset and digital - differences, advantages and disadvantages

Another article from the series “I should have written it a long time ago so as not to explain it a hundred times every day.” We will talk about the two most common printing methods - offset and digital. I hope this information will be useful to those who are going to order any printing for the first or not the first time, but have not been faced with the choice of “offset or digital”, and therefore do not know all the features, nuances and differences. I will deliberately avoid touching on any “academic” knowledge, focusing solely on what the client needs to know to the right choice way to print your products. This - basic knowledge, which are useful to have at the very beginning of the journey to ordering business cards or any other printing.

If you don't have time to read the opuses. Then immediately scroll down the page - there the table summarizes in the simplest, most concise and accessible form comparative characteristics offset and numbers (price, terms, quality, etc.). In most cases, it should be enough to make a choice in favor of digital or offset.

If you have free time, the desire to go a little deeper into this topic and at least a drop of compassion for the author - read everything, it’s not in vain that I tried! :)

The shortest general information. Offset and digital printing are fundamentally different ways transferring digital (computer) images to paper (and some other) media. A digital printing press is, very relatively speaking, a hefty (up to half a ton in weight) color laser printer with a bunch of different options. An offset printing machine weighs 5-10 tons and takes up many times (or even tens of times) more space. In general, offset is already quite a serious business, requiring large investments by the standards of Belarus, more staff and availability large areas, some of which must meet additional requirements - ventilation, powerful electrical network, certain air humidity, temperature, etc.

For clarity: to make an average digital printing house “from scratch” (with new equipment), having bought everything so that it can be proudly called a “full-cycle digital (operational) printing house,” 50 thousand dollars, from two to five workers, is more than enough and standard office space even an area of ​​20-25 squares. Now compare with offset: the cost of a new offset printing machine alone can easily exceed a million dollars, offset printing houses rarely employ less than 10 people, and the minimum area known to me occupied by an offset printing house, at least relatively “packed” with its own equipment, is 120 meters. but this is actually very little. And the office can NEVER be in the same room as the production workshops. If only because offset production is very noisy and quite toxic.

Order fulfillment times . The minimum turnaround time for a small digital order is no more than an hour, the minimum turnaround time for an offset print run is a business day. But, regarding offset, a day is a completely fantastic and unrealistic period, which is only possible with complete absence in the printing press loading and a whole other number of other unlikely conditions that must coincide. Over the years permanent job with an offset of many hundreds of orders* “today for tomorrow,” about three were ready - and all of them were in minimal quantities and one-sided. In reality, the lead time for an offset order is from a week to several months (although the latter is also too much and does not happen often).

Why are the terms so different (“lyrics”, not necessary to read). With digital printing, the finished layout (installation sheet) is immediately output directly to the printing machine in the required quantity, and after leaving it, the order can immediately be given to the client (pre-cut if necessary). That is, if you have a ready-made layout in a digital printing house, they can make you a set of business cards while you drink a cup or two of coffee. In offset printing, everything is more complicated: the finished installation sheet is divided into 4 color layers, each of them is printed on a special film (many printing houses do this in third-party organizations - immediately plus a day before the order is due), then using these films, special photosensitive metal plates (forms) - 4 for single-sided printing and 8 for double-sided printing. Then these plates are mounted on special shafts in a printing machine, paint is added to the machine (not powder - vaguely reminiscent of ordinary paint for floors, doors, etc.) and they begin to print, having previously ruined a certain amount of paper for “adjustment”. The principle of printing is the following - the paint “clings” to the exposed areas on the plates, from which it is then transferred to paper using the principle of a stamp. If the printing is double-sided, then before printing the second side, remove the old plates (forms), thoroughly wash the machine from any remaining paint and start the whole process first, starting with attaching the forms for the reverse side. Printed offset edition in mandatory must dry thoroughly, otherwise, when cutting, the front side will definitely “break off” (that is, it will be printed on the back), and the entire circulation may be completely damaged. Modern technologies make it possible to produce forms, avoiding the stage with films, but in the general whirlwind of the offset process this does not significantly reduce the time.

Order fulfillment times - separately for business cards and flyers in prefabricated offset editions (IMPORTANT). A special and very common type of offset orders are the so-called prefabricated runs, or assemblies. What is it?

And this is an order (circulation) that belongs not to one client, but to several, and sometimes to several dozen clients. This is especially true for business cards and small leaflets. Without loading you with more technological questions, I’ll just say that most often the minimum circulation for offset printing is 1000 printed sheets (ABSOLUTELY THE SAME sheets, the same size and with the same image!). And the printed sheet is a MINIMUM A3 format. 24 business cards fit on an A3 sheet. Our offset printed sheet holds 35 business cards. Therefore, if you want to order YOUR own, separate business card edition, then you will have to order 34,000 business cards. But there are only a few such customers. That’s why offset business cards with a circulation of 1-2 thousand have to wait quite a long time - we need time to collect orders for all 34 business cards in the circulation. The situation with leaflets is approximately the same - as a rule, fewer of them are placed on a sheet, but they are also ordered less often than business cards.

Minimum orders. You don’t have to explain for a long time: the minimum order in a digital printing house can be even one A3 sheet (translated into business cards - 24 pieces). As a rule, the minimum order for offset printing is 500 or even 1000 finished products (that is, for example, 1000 business cards, absolutely identical, the 300+300+400 option does not work).

By the way, in the “minimalism” of numbers there is one kind of side, but tangible plus - the ability to make a color proof minimal costs. That is, the client can ask him to display ONE SHEET of the products he needs, evaluate the quality, and already decide to place an order. In offset, this procedure is very difficult and quite expensive; it is done only for really large orders.

Price issue. Here I will also try to be as short as possible. Offset printing is significantly cheaper. Let's take business cards as an example: 1000 double-sided offset business cards cost about $30 in Minsk, the same order in numbers will be on average twice as expensive. This is not due to the greed of printers, but to the cost of expenses - different costs of paper, inks, working hours, different scales of work performed, etc. In general, it is believed that digital has a better price when ordering runs of up to 300 copies. If orders are from 500 and even more so from 1000, then the figure will be more expensive. But price is not the only indicator (don’t forget about the timing and some other nuances).

Another feature is that in offset printing the discounts for increasing quantities will be greater than in digital printing. This is due to the fact that in digital printing there are no pre-press costs, the cost of one printed sheet does not depend on the number of such sheets in the order. In offset, pre-press costs are quite significant (films, plates, chemicals, etc.). And these costs are distributed to each sheet of circulation. That is, if pre-press offset costs are equal to one hundred dollars, then with a circulation of 1000 sheets they increase the cost of one printed sheet by 10 cents, and with a circulation of 10,000 - by only 1 cent, that is, the reduction in price of one printed sheet occurs as if by itself. In digital printing, quantity discounts occur solely due to lower profit margins.

Print quality. I won’t bend my soul if I say that in the absence of superfluous requirements from the customer, and truly eagle vision a well-functioning offset press and a “live” digital machine have comparable quality of printing “small forms” (the same business cards and leaflets). But, as a rule, offset printing subjectively a little more “matte”, and digital - a little more “glossy”.

Paper quality. In most cases, when performing standard digital printing orders, higher quality (but also more expensive) paper is used - it is noticeably whiter, more pleasant to the touch, and produces less dust. This is caused primarily by the capriciousness of the digital printing machines themselves - low-quality paper reduces its service life significantly.

And in digital printing, various textured papers and designer cardboards are much more often used - this, again, is an advantage of the small circulation of “digital”. That is, the client has the opportunity to quickly order a hundred business cards on the designer cardboard he likes, and not wait 10 years until another 34 clients want to print on the same cardboard in offset thousand copies. In turn, offset has a REVERSE PLUS, that is, the ability to print on paper of such low cost and quality (newsprint paper, for example) that the price of the final product almost tends to zero (sometimes the quality of printing practically does not matter, and then the price - argument number one). Offset also allows you to print on the thickest paper and on various thick cardboards. But the number in this regard is limited. In the vast majority of cases, digital machines do not accept paper thicker than 280-300 grams per meter and thinner than 80 grams per meter.

Brief summary. In its most simplified form, the comparison can be summarized as follows. Offset: cheap, but long wait, paper in most cases worse quality, than in numbers, but the density range is “from zero to infinity.” Minimum quantity products per order - 500 (usually 1000) pieces. Digital: very fast (hence the name “operational printing”), but significantly more expensive. The paper is of better quality, whiter, but the density range is smaller - from 80 to 300 g/m2. You can even print one copy.

All of the above is summarized in the table below.

Dear readers! I will be VERY glad to receive your feedback and advice regarding all articles, their usefulness, ease of understanding, and will also be happy to listen to all your wishes about what else you want to read on the pages of our magazine.

Modern printing houses use 2 main types of printing - offset and digital. What are their features?

Facts about offset printing

Under offset It is customary to understand printing using a special machine that uses elements with printed image templates. These elements are most often made of metals. In addition, the structure of the offset machine uses a canvas made of waterproof fabric, most often rubberized.

During the printing process, the coloring matter does not fall onto the paper or other surface directly, but through the use of intermediate mechanisms. Mainly cylinders rotating around their axis.

In classic offset machines, two cylinders are used: the first contains the printing elements, the other is called “offset” and is in contact with the paper or other surface on which the image is applied. The purpose of the offset cylinder is to reduce wear on the main one (printing elements are placed on it). In addition, its use allows you to distribute the paint on paper or other surface more evenly than if it were applied directly.

The main advantage of offset printing is the ability to significantly reduce the cost of producing printed products (per 1 unit), provided that the circulation is large enough. In addition, offset printing allows you to use almost all types of paper. As many experts in the field of printing note, the quality of offset printing in many cases is much higher than when using other technologies.

The disadvantages of offset include the need preliminary preparation printed elements - this takes considerable time, and therefore fulfilling prompt orders using appropriate technology is not always possible. For small runs, using the offset method is not economically profitable.

Facts about digital printing

Under digital printing is understood when using devices that involve the use of image forms in the form of graphic files that are located on the computer. The simplest and most affordable device for digital printing is a printer. But, of course, it has a very modest productivity in terms of producing printed products in large quantities, which is why modern printing houses use specialized printing machines.

Unlike devices of the first type, in which there is an offset cylinder located between the printing forms and the paper, in digital machines the ink is applied directly to the paper.

The main advantages of digital printing:

• efficiency (there is no need, as in the case of offset, to pre-prepare printing elements - you just need to have graphic files at your disposal);
• low cost of printing 1 unit of printed products for small and medium circulations;
• the ability to print images of almost any complexity and color content.

The disadvantages of digital printing include the relatively high costs when printing printed products in large quantities.

Comparison

The main difference between offset printing and digital printing is that the first technology in its classic version involves printing images based on pre-prepared forms, while the second technology can use forms in the form of graphic files.

Eat significant difference also in the design of printing machines of the types under consideration. Offset devices imply the use of a multi-stage mechanism, which includes at least 2 cylinders - the main and offset. In digital devices, ink is applied directly to paper or other surfaces.

It can be noted that modern printing houses also use combined devices - combining digital and offset printing technologies.

Having determined what the difference is between offset and digital printing, we reflect the conclusions in the table.

Table

Offset printing	Digital printing
Involves printing images based on pre-prepared forms	Involves printing images based on forms in the form of graphic files - immediately ready for processing and transferring to paper or other surface
Most offset presses use a blanket cylinder to reduce the load on the main print cylinder and also provide a more even distribution of ink.	Most digital presses apply ink directly to the paper or other surface.
Optimal for printing large quantities	Optimal for printing medium and small runs
Involves significant time spent preparing printed forms	Characterized by efficiency: having graphic files available, you can immediately begin printing them on paper or other surface

When working with a new client, many of them ask us, what is the difference between offset and digital printing? Here are our detailed answers to this question:

Below is a list of pros and cons:

Offset printing

Benefits of offset printing

• Allows you to convey a wide range of colors. Vibrant colors Florescence, Pantones®, metallic colors, foil and polish, all this allows you to create an effect using this method printing
• Promotes accurate color reproduction and consistency
• Wide range of paper pulps, sizes and textures
• Light ink such as white ink can be printed on a dark paper surface (i.e. white ink on black paper)
• Adjusting Ink Density

Disadvantages of offset printing

• Installation time is slower and more complex
• Offset printing cost V small quantities(up to 500 copies) may be more expensive
• You can only print one copy at a time
• Drying time is significant
• Printing press machines can be large and require support and maintenance

Digital printing

For digital printing you can use CMYK or RGB (that's all color models), but color shifts may occur with RGB content. This generally applies to short runs of 1,000 copies or less from digital printing. Setting up a file for printing takes less time because there are no printing forms. In this way, the completed file can be protected and the required number of copies are completed within a shorter period of time. For accurate color checking, a reference can be printed on the final stock selection. The process eventually evolved into an alternative printing solution.

Benefits of digital printing

• Fast printing and no ink drying time
• Inexpensive, cost-effective solution for small runs of up to 500 copies
• Can be printed on a variety of media including paper, glass, metal, marble
• Can be made in very large format, printing up to 3 meters in diameter
• You can only print one copy

Disadvantages of digital printing

• Color and density are poor
• Expensive digital printing cost for more than 500 copies
• Pantone® color cannot be reproduced
• Accurate color reproduction
• There is no way to reproduce textures, for example: metallic inks, foils or polishes

Resume

Offset printing uses plates to transfer images, while digital printing does not use plates.

Offset printing is typically used for longer runs (at least 1,000 copies), while digital is primarily used for shorter runs of 1,000 copies or less. Offset printing price and digital printing price needs to be determined individually.

Offset printing assumes the ability to specify PMS color, while digital does not use PMS color selection.

Offset gives a better final printed effect of solid areas of color from offset printing than from digital printing.

When ordering the production of printing products, many are faced with a choice - what is better to order - offset printing or digital? These printing methods have significant specific differences. However, it is not entirely correct to argue that one type of printing is better than another, because the choice directly depends on ultimate goal and the wishes of the customer himself. First of all, you need to decide on the circulation. Here they usually adhere to the following rule: if the circulation is large, then it is better to choose offset, if the circulation is small, trial or urgent, it is better to give preference to the digital printing method. There are other ways to determine which type of printing will be best in your case. So…

Offset printing is better if...

1. High quality printing required. Used by almost any printing house, because it has an undeniable advantage in the form of excellent quality of finished products. In the production of printing using this printing method, paint is supplied from a flexible form directly to a rubber sheet under pressure, and only then to the necessary printing materials (paper, fabric, etc.).
2. There is a need for full color printing and additional ink. Offset printing in in this case digital is better due to the fact that it allows the use of full-color printing methods without restrictions of two or three colors and even has the ability to use additional effects - varnish, silver or gold plating.
3. Required use different types paper and post-printing processing is required. The peculiarity of offset printing is the possibility of using various types papers ranging from newspaper and offset to designer linen or corduroy paper and even vinyl!
4. Large circulation required. Only when ordering a significant amount of finished products will offset printing be profitable. With a small circulation, this will be a rather expensive order. This is due to the fact that the printing equipment itself can cost several thousand, or even millions, of dollars. In addition, pre-press preparation and production of prints takes long time. Before you start offset printing, a mandatory color proof and color balancing, creation and printing is required. required forms etc. In this case, the implementation of an urgent order is impossible, and printing small runs is unprofitable.

Digital printing is better if...

1. High speed production of printed products is required. in this aspect, it significantly outperforms offset, which is an advantage when urgently ordering production of a circulation.
2. Fast and high-quality pre-press processing of source images is required. Using digital printing, it is possible to view an image at the pre-press stage, obtain high-quality color and black-and-white prints, and also make test prints.
3. A small edition order is planned. Digital printing in the best possible way suitable for small runs, which will be more profitable than ordering small runs using the offset manufacturing method. In addition, with digital printing it is possible to personalize and number data.
4. Production of products in small formats is required. This type printing is ideal for ordering business cards, postcards, invitations, small leaflets, posters and booklets. A3 format is the largest for digital printing, but the minimum can be absolutely anything. The only drawback is that with this printing method it is possible to use a limited number of types of paper (smooth coated paper, its analogues and certain types designer).

Having studied the main features of digital and offset printing listed above, the customer will be able to draw up own performance, which printing method will be more profitable and suitable specifically for ordering it.

Ordinary people who do not often use the services of printing companies are unlikely to think about the differences between digital and offset printing. Even among those who order brochures, leaflets or posters from time to time, not everyone knows the features of these methods. But experts can explain in detail all the pros and cons of digital and offset printing. We will try to tell you about these features in an accessible way.

Technological process of offset and digital printing

Digital printing uses a color laser printer. The main advantage of this type of printing is the speed of order fulfillment. For example, you can hand over a design in the morning and pick up the finished product in the afternoon. Plus, with digital printing, it is possible to order a circulation of one copy. It should be noted that the number of sheets does not affect the increase or decrease in price. As a rule, it is the same money.

With offset printing, exactly the opposite happens. The larger the order circulation, the less money you will pay per printed copy of the product. This feature of this type of printing is associated with technological costs. If you have submitted a magazine, booklet, leaflet or book for circulation, then before the printing process itself, special films are printed. To obtain them, he uses the photo-output method. It should be noted that films made in this way are of higher quality than those printed even on an expensive laser printer, but they are much more expensive. Good quality Printing from films is achieved by having a separate photo output for each color. Typically, four films are output - black, magenta, blue and yellow flowers. Sometimes a pantone color is added to them, which is considered additional and optional. Pantone colors are imitation of silver, bronze and gold.

A form is produced directly for each film, which is placed on the printing device and then the printing process itself begins. On at the moment modern technologies have appeared in the printing industry printing presses, thanks to which you can avoid using films. Thus, the printing process is accelerated and becomes more affordable in monetary terms. There are single-color printing presses. In this case, during printing, one color is first applied, then the shape is changed, another color is printed, and so on until all the colors are applied. The result should be a beautiful full-color image.
It is possible to reduce financial costs by using one or two colors during printing. In this way, the required number of films, forms and rolled products can be reduced. Digital printing is completely devoid of such red tape. Of course, black and white and color images will have different prices.

The advantages of these types of printing

Main positive features offset printing are: saving the cost of ordering large quantities in terms of the price of one copy, the ability to print in large A1 format, since the maximum format for digital printing is A2, and the use of pantone inks.
But digital printing is different in its high quality, speed of production and the ability to order a minimum quantity.