Digital Printing

Evolve your production capabilities The imagePRESS C6000VP Series has efficient production power which easily meets a diversity of Print-on-Demand challenges with unrivaled reliability. Thus, translating into more profits for your business.
The new image quality benchmark The imagePRESS C6000VP Series takes digital color production printing to a higher level. Enjoy razor-sharp reproduction of text, images and graphics. Also, with accurate color registration and high quality on all media you can never fail to impress your customers.
Versatile media capabilities have evolved again The imagePRESS C6000VP Series offers true application diversity, thanks to its flexible media handling and perfect finishing capabilities which provides optimum results.

Digital vs. Offset Printing

The growth of digital printing technology has brought technical advancements, more options, and exciting new features to today’s commercial printing. It's also brought some confusion. An understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of digital printing and how those compare to traditional offset lithography is critical in making the right choice.

Mechanical Steps Eliminated in Digital Printing

Digital printing eliminates many of the mechanical steps required for conventional printing, including making films and color proofs, manually stripping the pieces together and making plates.

Advantages of Digital

• Shorter turnaround. Every print is the same. More accurate counts, less waste and fewer variations, due to not having to balance ink and water during press run.
• Cheaper low volume printing. While the unit cost of each piece may be higher than with offset printing, when setup costs are included digital printing provides lower per unit costs for very small print runs.
• Variable Data Printing is a form of customizable digital printing. Using information from a database or external file, text and graphics can be changed on each piece without stopping or slowing down the press. For example, personalized letters can be printed with a different name and address on each letter. Variable data printing is used primarily for direct marketing, customer relationship development and advertising.

Advantages of Offset

• High image quality.
• Works on a wide range of printing surfaces including paper, wood, cloth, metal, leather, rough paper and plastic.
• The unit cost goes down as the quantity goes up.
• Quality and cost-effectiveness in high volume jobs. While today’s digital presses are close to the cost/benefit ratio of offset for high quality work, they are not yet able to compete with the volume an offset press can produce.
• Many modern offset presses use computer-to-plate systems as opposed to the older computer-to-film work flows, further increasing quality.

Graphic Design Color Tips For You

A word to the "Color-Wise"! Every designer likes to make mid-course changes in color when in the computer phase of the art. To find the right answer makes it worthwhile. BUT...make sure, before you close that file, that you "discard" ALL non-utilized colors. That reduces the file size, and when multiplied by dozens or hundreds of files, translates into more usable storage.

"Golden Rule" Rule (Same goes with) "Page Rulers." Shut them off, also, when closing a file. The space per file is not much to speak of, but keeping a hundred or more rulers on, chews up a few parsecs of storage space."

How to Avoid Gradation Banding

• Reduce line screen (if 150 go to 133)
• Compose screens of as many process colors as possible. (When they overlay each other they tend to cover better.)
• Boost fountain steps to the maximum (256+)
• Always check your individual plates (CMYK): Some proofing mediums will not show light screens or gradations well.

Digital Printing Separations

"Running digital printing files for digital printing or film separations, if you are still using them, can be easy or it can be a pain, it all depends on a number of things. 1. How clear the output instructions are. 2. How well the files were built, for ease of output or for ease of design. 3. All fonts must be supplied with files to output. 4. All images must be setup properly, CMYK or Pantone depending on output requirements. 5. All EPS, TIF or other images must be supplied with files to output. 6. Information must be clear, what versions of software the files were created in. Also what type of color proof is the designer supplying, is it accurate? 7. It must also be clear what kind of final proof is necessary to provide to the printer from the final film. 8. Were the files created on PC platform or Macintosh platform? All these items are important to obtain the best output for the least amount of money."