Print Processes- Digital

Digital print is the most modern of the print processes, it is the only method of printing to work directly from a computer. It is often used for print jobs with a load of 500 or less due to the time it takes to produce the prints and often with this number of prints is the most cost affective. In digital printing the printers rely on a system called Rasta Image Processor (RIP) which interact with the computer to produce the print. Digital printers use CMYK colours with a usual resolution of 600dpi for the high end industry printers. With digital it is also possible to use spot colour although it is less cost affective the more colours you use, so ideally spot colour should be used on one or two colours.

In digital print there are two types of printer, laser and inkjet, inkjet uses cartridges that store wet ink that is placed onto the page. Unlike inkjet, laser printers use toner which is applied to the paper using static electricity which charges atoms positively on the paper which makes them fuse to the paper.