Another of the many advantages of commercial digital printing is the flexibility it provides. Digital printing makes it possible to make changes to a work of art throughout the printing process. For example, if you are printing parts of direct mail and want to print names and addresses which differ each card, you can do so easily with digital printing. The digital process also gives you more flexibility in the materials you can print on and with the quantities as you can print as low as one copy with digital. Although there are disadvantages to digital printing, you still have a much greater choice with digital printing than with traditional offset printing. Offset printing requires larger minimum quantity to account for the large setup processes that are required to print.
As versatile as commercial digital printing is, it has its drawbacks that need to be carefully considered. First of all, the color quality is not as good as that of offset printing. Digital printing uses the CMYK system – a unique combination of cyan, magenta, yellow and black to get as close as possible to each color in your artwork. Offset printing, on the other hand, uses the Pantone color system for precise color matching.
Another disadvantage of digital printing is that the color is not absorbed by the paper in the same way as in offset printing. This means that when printed areas are cut or folded, there may be cracks in the ink. Therefore, digital printing may be less desirable for brochures, greeting cards and other folded products.