There are many printing companies around Carlsbad, and quite a few specify that they do digital printing. But what does that mean? Don’t all printing services in Carlsbad use digital printers? What else is there? While you’re doing your printing in Carlsbad, you might notice that there are different styles of printing—digital is just one, in addition to offset printing and traditional press printing. Each has its own benefits and drawbacks, but digital printing has the lion’s share of benefits.
Image quality
Whether you’re just printing text or printing a photo, digital printing can give you immaculate image quality. On average, 300 dots per inch (dpi) is the best quality to print photos at. As long as you have this quality, you’re going to have faithful replication of your photo. As far as text is concerned, quality is going to be the very best. Lines will be sharp and the copy will be easy to read.
Speed
What more is there to say? Digital printing is fast. All it really requires as far as hardware is concerned is a computer and a printer. Other methods require more steps, whether that means developing film or using other equipment to produce text. That also means that other methods are much more expensive and labor-intensive than digital printing.
Flexibility
Of course, one of the biggest advantages to digital printing is the fact that you don’t ever really have to tie yourself down to a single hard copy. With more traditional methods, you can’t change the data once it’s on the page. But digital printing just produces a paper version of the digital file you’re working on. Therefore, you can continue to edit the digital file once you see it on the page. You’d be hard-pressed to find that kind of flexibility with another kind of printing.
Although these three advantages are incredible bounds beyond the kinds of printing people used to use, digital printing still has its foibles. Some of them include:
Large volume means large cost
One page is just a few cents. What about a few thousand? If you need to make a lot of prints, you’re going to be paying through the nose for it, even if the printer gives you a bulk discount. Photo stores make quite a bit of money on prints, and you can rest assured that they aren’t losing money when they give you a price break at the 1,000 print mark.
Technology gods
The technology gods are a fickle bunch. If the smallest thing goes wrong in the system—even if there’s just a small short in one of the cables between the computer and the printer, the pictures probably won’t print. And if they do, they won’t look right. If you’ve saved a picture in a nonstandard format (like .TIFF or .RAW), the printer may not be able to read it. Essentially, you have to know exactly how to work with your prints if you want them to come out right.
Printing companies in Carlsbad will be able to help guide you through the trickier aspects of how to best produce digital prints. You’ll also notice while you’re printing in Carlsbad that digital printing has distinct advantages over other methods—that’s not to say that it’s necessarily better, but just different. Take your time, go into printing services around Carlsbad, and find out what digital printing can do for you.
