Do you have a photo printing business that feels like it’s getting left in the dust? If you’re still not familiar with digital photo printing, now is the time. Below, we’ve got a list of the benefits of digital printing.
There was an estimate of 1.2 trillion digital photos that were taken in 2018 from smartphones. While it’s more cost-effective to keep digital albums, many still keep physical albums. This is where you and your digital printing business enter the picture.
Keep reading to learn why you need to shift to digital printing and learn the basics of it.
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1. Digital Printing Is Cost-Effective
Do you remember the movies that show how photographers need to have a darkroom or lab to process the photos? That’s the old-school style of printing. You’d need a lot of chemicals, a big room, different materials, and time.
Digital printing offers a much easier process than darkroom printing. After all, what is digital printing if not fast, flexible, and less labor-intensive? You can get something as small as a modern inkjet printer and a pack of premium printer paper.
When compared to offset printing, it’s also cheaper. The large print quantities and setup fees for offset printers are what makes it expensive. However, if you need prints in huge volumes, it’ll be cheaper to use offset printing.
2. Digital Printing Is Faster
When you invest in digital printing, you won’t need to take too many steps to set up your printer. Sometimes, it’s as easy as pushing a button to turn on the printer, and you’re good to go. Most of them will only go to the initial printer setup and maintenance.
This means you can print an 8×10 photo in as fast as 2-3 minutes. Also, most modern digital printers today have advanced color-match features. The printer will take care of the color thanks to its built-in color registration system.
3. You Have More Options and Materials
A top item in this list is that you can use different materials for each print job. You have the choice of picking between grain and smooth paper. You can create prints for shirts, business cards, and more.
If you want to get creative with your prints, digital printing is a perfect choice. If you’re a designer, you won’t have to worry about any color limitations. Digital printers today can produce any color you want, which boosts creativity.
4. Digital Printing Can Give You High-Quality Prints
Digital printers today come in all brands, price ranges, and sizes. If you get a high-end printer, you can also print high-quality images. Such images are comparable to the products of offset printing, which is the king of quality printing.
It’s why designers, small business owners, and marketers prefer digital printing. They can get high-quality prints from them, as well as a wider range of options in print volume and more.
With that said, be careful with how you pick a digital printer. Cheaper printers may give you substandard printing quality. Yet, that’s not always the case, so consider each option wisely.
5. It Is the King of Personalized Printing
Do you want an affordable solution for customized printing? Do you want to create custom prints for a marketing campaign? If you do, digital printing is the best printing technique.
Every piece you print can get customized to fit the audience it aims to reach. The reason behind this is that digital printing doesn’t use plates. In analog printing, if you created customized prints, each customization will be a different printing job.
In digital printing, it’s easier to create custom prints. Since there is no need for creating custom plates, you can print as many custom jobs as you like. This makes digital printing ideal for marketing campaigns, personalized greeting cards, and more.
6. You Can Produce Prints in Small Volumes
Do you want to keep a physical album as the older generation did? Do you want to create a scrapbook where you can add little notes and handcrafted embellishments? Photos are essential items in albums and scrapbooks, and you likely only need one copy of each photo.
In traditional printing methods, you need to make large orders to get the most out of your money. The reason is that there’s a lot of setting up needed in offset printing. To make the labor worth it, offset printing businesses will produce large quantities.
With digital printing, it’s easier to produce short to medium print runs. As we mentioned, it’s easier and faster to set up, and it’s cheaper. It’s the ideal choice for last-minute prints for missing or lost pages in a report.
This thing alone opens up the doors of a printing business to many customers. Most people aren’t looking for large-scale prints. For example, a small restaurant may only need 5 copies of a menu.
7. No Wastes, Less Environmental Impact
The final item in the list of digital printing advantages is that it is eco-friendly. Inject printing reduces the amount of wasted ink. That’s because it only ejects ink to the parts to get printed.
Since it doesn’t use plates, you also don’t need to wash off any plates. Compared to the darkroom and offset printing, you don’t need to use toxic chemicals to make a printed piece. Digital printing cuts out those harmful chemicals by reducing the steps to make a print.
Also, let’s not forget that you can print preview. With the help of programs like Photoshop, you won’t need to print sample pieces to see what it’ll look like. The programs will already show you an estimate of the final print.
Start Using Digital Printing More
That’s the end of our list of digital printing benefits. We hope we’ve shown you the edge of digital printing compared to other printing techniques. We also hope you learned something useful and valuable about digital printing today.
Do you want to discover more fun facts about printing in general? Do you want to get in-depth knowledge on how digital printing works compared to other types? If you’re interested, feel free to check out our other guides and posts.