How Digital Printing Benefits You

Digital Printing and large format printing are the most common types of printing today, and there’s a reason for that. Old methods of printing, such as flexography, lithography and letterpress don’t accommodate large format graphics and wide format printing, because they all require the use of printing plates.

Lithography involves a large, flat plate made of metal or aluminum, on which, the image is drawn in wax or another oily substance, which is the medium to transfer the ink to the printed sheet. This method was invented in 1796 and has been used since. However, the obvious drawback is that the image needs to be drawn, which makes the process quite time consuming, especially for Large Format Printing.

Flexography is typically used for printing on packaging materials, such as brown paper, plastic and foil. It is a rolling press, in which the printed images are slightly raised on flexible rubber or plastic plates that roll along the printed material. The clear drawback to this method is that the plates need to be designed and created for each printed image, which again, is quite time consuming.

Letterpress printing, as created my Johannes Gutenberg in the mid 15th century, is fairly simple in that one inks raised, movable letters and presses the printed paper onto the letters. This method was widely used for printing text until the second half of the 20th century. Obviously, this method is more text friendly, and would not be helpful in creating and printing large graphics.

Digital printing, however, doesn’t require the use of printing plates. Instead, the graphics are created from a graphic design program and are then printed via high quality laser or inkjet printers. Since no plates are needed, digital printing allows for a much quicker turnaround time. All that needs to be created are the graphics. These specialized laser and inkjet printers are made for wide format printing, high quality graphics printing, and large format printing. There are virtually no limits to the details of the graphics or to the size of the project when using digital printing.