A Comprehensive Guide to Offset Printing

Posted by Print Early on February 15th, 2019

Offset printing is the most popular method of printing today. Forty percent of mass printing done worldwide is using offset printing. What is offset printing? The workings of offset printing are simple. Using three cylinders the image is transferred to a substrate. The printing plates are mounted on the first cylinder. Image on the plate is written with the right side up. After which, ink is applied to the first cylinder and the image is offset to the second cylinder. The second cylinder is covered by a rubber blanket. The image on the rubber blanket becomes reversed or wrong reading. Finally, the image is shifted from the blanket to the third cylinder. The image once again regains the right side up before printing. 4-color offset printing is the most common form of printing as it offers a wide variety of color options.

Different Types of Offset Presses

There are two main types of offset printing presses – sheet-fed and web-fed. In the sheetfed type of press, the printing is done on a single sheet of paper. Whereas, in the web-fed printing press, the printing is performed on a continuous sheet of paper in the form of a large roll. Once the printing is complete, this large sheet is cut into much smaller individual pieces.

There are several other differences between the various types of offset printing.

Uses of Offset Printing

Offset printing is vital in enhancing the way we live our lives. It penetrates every aspect from education through the printing of books, magazines, diaries, periodicals, and other materials used for reading to the packing industry. Offset printing is used to print the materials of the packages of goods for consumers – it includes every item you see on the supermarket shelves. Offset printing has numerous uses that will be too elaborate to write down in this blog; however, to sum up, the use of offset printing, we can say that the world would be a much less fun place without offset printing. Offset printing is the technique that allows the newspaper on your doorstep possible, novels affordable, and brings the power of marketing tools to the new businesses and startups.    

Difference between Offset Printing and Digital Printing

Printing is printing, right? Not exactly, there are differences between the different methods of printing. In certain situations, one printing method may be more suitable than the other. The cost difference and use of the printed material also influence the ideal method of printing.

The offset method of printing uses aluminium plates, which is utilized to transfer the image to rubber and then the image is printed on a paper. Whereas, digital printing does not use plates in the same manner as for offset printing; it instead relies on toner or large printers that do not utilize liquid ink. Once the setup is complete, the offset printing is highly efficient for printing large quantity with accurate color reproduction, professional, and crisp looking print.

Digital printing produces the best results when the quantity is small, say you have to print 20 greeting cards or 50 flyers. When each piece of printing requires customized information such as address, name, etc. digital printing becomes the ideal choice. With offset printing, you cannot have custom features in each piece of the printed material. You can order online offset printing at printearly.com.

While digital printing produces high-quality prints, it can become very expensive for businesses that need to produce a large quantity of printed materials; the best solution in such a situation is offset printing. At printearly.com, you have access to a wide range of online offset printing services.     

Advantages of Offset Printing

Offset printing has several advantages over digital printing. Here are a few of the benefits of choosing offset printing for your business.

• It is a cost-effective way of printing large quantities.
• The larger the quantity of the print you require, per piece cost, becomes cheaper.
• Provides a wider range of paper types with a custom finish.
• Option to choose custom ink such as Pantone and metallic.
• Greater color fidelity, print quality, and details.

Almost 90 percent of companies rely on offset printing for all their marketing materials including giants like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. Offset printing New York is provided by printearly.com at the most cost-effective manner. The company services some of the global giants in New York and worldwide.

Various Offset Print Materials

At Printearly, you can find everything from 4-color offset printing, large formats, 1&2 color Brochure printing, 4-color digital printing to roll labels. The company is trusted by Google, Lycamobile, United Nations, Yahoo, YouTube, and many other renowned organizations. This is the one stop solution for all your print requirements.