Short Run Printing Vs. Offset Printing Article

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Short run printing vs. offset printing

For many, there is a difficulty in choosing the printing method that you want to handle your projects. Two methods stand out as the most used methods – short run printing and offset printing.

Author: Adan Ines

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Each of these methods have distinct characteristics and traits that are very valuable. Let’s take a look at how these two printing methods work and let us examine their strengths as well as their weaknesses.

Here is a look at how short run printing fares against the different its offset printing counterpart:

Cost
This is a tricky aspect of printing. Both printing technologies are cost effective depending on the number of materials that you print.

Short run printers are very cost effective when you create prints in small batches. Because this type of printer uses direct to printer technology, you can be assured that the production cost that you will shoulder will be minimal. However, if you want to print in bulk, then offset printers have the distinct advantage. The production process of offset printers inhibits them from creating small copies of your prints. Doing so will only lead to an increase in actual price per piece.

However, when you print in large amounts, you can see that the price per piece of your materials will come down and gradually eclipsing that of the short run printers. While short run printers have the same price set per piece no matter how many copies you order, offset printers allow the prices of your materials to go down as the number of your orders increase

Turn around times
This is another toss up right here. Again, it boils down to the number of copies that you want your materials to have. If you want to have your copies at a very fast turnaround rate then short run printers can do the job for you. Because of the aforementioned direct to printer process, you no longer need the pre press processes that slow the printing time. You can create prints in almost an instant.

However, this the same direct to printer process is what makes short run printers unable to produce large orders. Offset printers on the other hand are very much capable of this. The production process that it goes through is geared towards producing mass amounts of a certain copy. The plates are used as guides in order to produce a large number of prints. Offset printers have the ability to print of up to 30,000 copies per hour.

Image quality and color
Offset printers are the epitome of quality images and colors that you can produce and short run printers can only come a close second because of the relatively weaker bond that it creates as opposed to the offset printers. However, one advantage of working with short run printers is that they can handle fine art prints with no problems. No mater how intricate and small the details that you have, you can still count on short run printers to replicate them perfectly.

So there you have it. Depending on the number of copies that you want – you can choose either offset printing or short run printers to achieve the best effects.

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Short run printing vs. offset printing