Digital Printing

Digital printing is a printing process used to print directly from a digital file to a printed piece. Digital, unlike traditional print processes, does not use a fixed-image and consumable image carrier (a plate). The image is created on a computer and is placed on a substrate through the use of spots or dots using a toner, inkjet, dye, or pigment-based transfer system.

Digital printing is growing exponentially due to the fact that the process has dramatically changed the way a document is reproduced. Most traditional printing performed today is reproduced using an offset printing process, which demands more time and makeready even with the latest computer-to-plate technology. Digital printing requires no makeready and therefore can be used to run a quantity as low as one; it can also be done in either black-and-white or color. This results in digital printing being well suited for short runs, custom publications, and personalized printing.

Short-Run

Short-run printing is most often defined as printing quantities of less than 5,000. Much of what is digitally printed today is considered short-run color with static images. Running a color job on a digital press is accomplished much quicker, opposed to running a job using traditional printing methods.

As digital presses have increased in speed and quality, there has been a perpetual shift in jobs being run on digital presses rather than traditional presses. Current trends bode well for digital printing in that they reveal an increase in digital printing over time in the amount of jobs being printed on digital presses and in increased run lengths.

Custom Publications

Contemporary digital printing technologies are conducive to reproduction of quantities as small as one. Inevitably, this has been the catalyst to the tremendous growth in the custom publication market.

On-demand publishing and self-publishing have flourished because of digital printing. On-demand publishing allows a publisher to acquire digital files from the author to easily create a relatively small number of prints.

Personalized Printing

Personalized printing is a form of variable-data printing (VDP), which is a digital printing technology. VDP means that the information on a page can vary but not necessarily on every page. Similarly, but not wholly alike, personalized printing means that each page is distinctly different from the others. The "personalization" of a piece may include a person's name or any other personally identifiable information that is unique to an individual. This technology is limitless in its potential as it as become a cornerstone of the direct marketing industry.