Digital or Litho? Why do I care?
Have you been bamboozled with jargon? Tickled with Technical?
As a print buyer you're not always certain of some of the terms the sales guy will use.
Sales: Would you prefer Digital or Litho Print?
Customer: (Trying not to look confused) Oh Litho for sure!
Sales: But your work is only 50 copies... wouldn't you prefer Digital?#
Customer: Well now that you mention it, I think Digital would look better for this job.
..... and so it goes.
So, Why might I want Litho Print, and When might I want Digital Print?
Digital print is comparable to inkjets creating an image with 000's of tiny dots of one of 4 primary colours on the page. Each page costs £0.0A p to produce, with no set up charges. Hence a run of 100 pages is just A times B. (which is fine when B is a "small" number)
Litho print has set up costs. It is where a plate is made and then inked up and impressed onto a page. Using 4 primary print colours a full array of colour can be achieved. Litho has higher set up costs - 4 physical plates with a impression of the artwork, each of one of the 4 primary colours. After the initial set up, costs are lower, 5000 is often less than 2 times the prince of 1000. and 10000 is often only 1.3>1.5 times the price of 5000.
The economy switches over based on the quantity.
Thats also why digital is not preferred on medium to large work. A fixed price per sheet x 10 000 sheets is more expensive than (set Up charges + Material charges)x 10 000 sheets.
Digital Print is not considered suitable for a folded product due to surface cracking at the folds. There are other physical differences that will dictate litho over digital or digital over litho, but COST is often the primary driver. For immediate availability where TIME is a factor, a Digital print run can be done within hours as opposed to days on a Litho run.
There is a Cost/Quanity graph for your product. Whilst the digital line on the graph is pretty straight, the litho line has a fixed start cost but curves and crosses over the digital line at some point.
Figuring where that point is for your project is the challenge!!
There is a Cost/Quanity graph for your product. Whilst the digital line on the graph is pretty straight, the litho line has a fixed start cost but curves and crosses over the digital line at some point.
Figuring where that point is for your project is the challenge!!
Created: June 14, 2010
