Digital Printing
Digital printing is the process of making prints from an electronic file. The artwork is created on a computer and directly printed onto the material. In fact, digital printing is an alternative to traditional printing methods such as flexography, lithography, offset printing, letterpress, gravure, and others. The process eliminates most of the steps that are needed for traditional printing methods such as colour proofs, making films, making printing plates, and stripping the pieces together manually.
The image needed for printing is directly sent to the printer through a digital file such as PDF, EPS and many other formats. The process is ideal for printing that requires smaller quantities with high amounts of detail. The process doesn’t include prepress stages between the document file and the final product – prepress stages are mandatory in most of the other traditional printing methods out there. On the other hand, you don’t need messy formatting equipment such as photo chemicals and film plates for this process. Here are the most important stages of digital printing. In fact, your print will come out perfectly when you follow these steps in digital printing.
The first step is to prepare a clean, sharp image with a high resolution for printing purposes.
Crop marks and bleeds are added as per the requirement of the printing order. Crop marks are the lines on the corner of the print. Once the bleed is trimmed, crop marks will ensure that there are no unprinted edges in the final trimmed document.
The next step is imposition.
This ensures the maximum area of the paper is used for the print. This will help make the print job efficient and cut down on material waste.
Before being sent to the printer, the files need to be formatted properly. PDF, EPS, JPEG files are all used for printing purposes depending on the software that you use and the quality of the image.
When setting up files for printing we use the universal colour reproduction methods commonly referred to as RGB and CMYK. RGB refers to the primary colours of light - Red, Green and Blue, that are used in monitors, television screens, digital cameras and scanners. CMYK refers to the primary colours of pigment: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. The combination of RGB light creates white, while the combination of CMYK inks creates black.
Another method for colour reproduction is PMS colour matching which is a commonly used method for matching up and staying faithful to the colour scheme of your business
PMS (which stands for Pantone Matching System) is a colour system based upon over one thousand standardized ink colours, unlike the CMYK colour system, where cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink are mixed during the printing process.
Digital printing is convenient and highly effective compared to traditional methods and comes with numerous benefits. That is why the process is so popular in this day and age.