We are living in a digital age where speed makes all the difference. It is evident in the area of printing technology, too that has now become much speedier by adapting digital printing. Digital printing provides a quick turnaround that makes it possible to meet stiff deadlines with high-quality work and gives an edge to businesses in meeting competition. Among all types of printing like – Offset Lithography, Flexography, Screen printing, letterpress, gravure, and others, digital Printing is the most modern method of printing. It prints electronic files that conveniently meet the high standards of quality for commercial purposes.
Printing used to be a multi-step process, and specific printing techniques were necessary for specific applications. For example, for multi-color printing offset technology is most suited for superior quality and mass production, but for printing text, only letterpress printing is a viable option. Digital printing has simplified the printing process. It consists of a single step process of creating the artwork on a computer and then printing it directly on the material of your choice as done by Superior Resource Printing & Graphics.
The modality of digital printing
Graphic designers and artists create the artwork for printing on computers in the form of files in various formats PDF, PSD, TIFF, and others. For delivering high-quality print capable of capturing a massive amount of minute details but having smaller order quantity digital printing is the best choice. Unlike traditional printing that have several pre-printing preparative stages, Digital printing is straightforward and converts the digital documents file into the printed product in a single step. It eliminates the use of film plates and photo chemicals that make printing a hazardous and messy process.
Stages in digital printing
The first step involves the creation of a computer file containing the artwork comprising of a clean and sharp image of high resolution according to the size of print required.
In the next step, crop marks and bleed are incorporated in the image depending on the need. Crop marks create the boundary of the image that appears in print. Bleed is the process of trimming the image to ensure that there are no edges left unprinted in the trimmed document.
The name of the next stage is Imposition, which consists of ensuring the right paper size for printing so that there is an optimal use of paper without any wastage.
Converting the artwork file into printable format is the last step before printing. The file must be in PDF, BMP, JPEG, GIF or TIFF format to make it compatible for the digital printers. Which format would be suitable depends on the software used for printing.