May 2013 | printinmexico.comprintinmexico.com

by Michael Newman

Why You Should Print Or Not Print Documents

Printing of documents can be cost saving and a good idea for you to make some things visible. You should first find out whether what you want to print is copyrighted so that you do not get into legal problems. Most of the books and magazines are mostly copyrighted and, thus you do not have printing rights.
Book and magazine owners reserve the printing rights mostly to their editors only. Printing of such books can be referred to as piracy and can make you end up in jail. Personal documents can be printed for you to share them with friends or even post them.

You can choose to customize your own folders, postcards, files and notepads in order to make them attractive. This gives a greater advantage since you can input personal pictures in them and share them with friends. You can also choose to print a calendar with the specifications you want and hang it in your home.

It is advantageous to print up brochures since they pass information about things like your business easily among people. Fliers involve a lot of printing and thus they should be done by experts who have the right materials. They should be visible from far and should be attractive, so that people can be interested to read them.

You can choose to print your books so that you can maintain them in a good condition and store them for future reference. This helps you to be able to have a good record of your documents in future. You can choose to copyright them so that they cannot be duplicated without your authority.

You should make sure that you do not print any document that is copyrighted in order to be on the safe side of the law. It is important to carry out a research of what you want to print so that you may learn more about it. Printing your personal products cannot be a problem thus you can do it any time.

Offset lithography and digital printing are arguably the most common printing methods (we cover many more in this article) but they are not the same. When should you use offset and when digital printing?

When to choose offset lithography

When high image quality is a priority. Offset offers the best possible printing quality.
When specialized inks and color fidelity are required. Metallic and PMS (Pantone Matching System) colors are available.
On long-run prints. Producing over 1000 prints is more cost effective as cost per unit decreases.
With a wide range of printing substrates such as a more flexible variety of paper types, wood, cloth, metal leather and plastic.
With formats larger than 18″ x 12″.

When to choose digital printing

When a short turnaround is priority.
On short-run prints. Printing under 500-1000 units is more cost effective.
When customization is required. Since this is a computer-to-print method, information from a database or external text and graphics can be modified on each piece as it prints (e.g., names on business cards, personalized letters or ticket numbers).
When no PMS colors are required (though some digital printers are able to closely match them).

In short, digital printing is recommended for faster, cheaper and customizable low-volume prints. Offset printing should be used for high-volume printing with a higher quality.

Sources: Pinsonnault Creative | Sage Media | Tsunami Marketing | University of South Australia

Monthly Archives: May 2013

To print or not to print

Offset vs. digital printing