Yes, Digital Will Prevail
If you want to start an argument among print professionals, simply make the statement that offset printing is doomed. It is a truth people don't want to hear. Manufacturers of offset presses in particular don't want to hear it.
It isn't as though all offset presses will disappear by some arbitrary date: say 2020. But by then they will likely be relegated to special purposes: extremely long runs of static material, special in-line coatings and so on. After all, the company I worked for for 25 years still has a hundred year old Heidelberg windmill letterpress. In fact they have three letterpress machines used for numbering and die cutting. They still work fine and handle some work that can be handled profitably with very old technology.
And there are still small companies churning out letterpress work for invitations and other specialty work where the depth and feel of letterpress gives a "charm" factor to the finished piece.
But the truth is, digital will prevail. And specifically ink-jet is likely to ultimately take the bulk of the print market.
People still argue quality. I'm not sure why. The argument is that offset simply looks "better" than digital. Do the people who make this argument have some culturally induced blindness? In what way is offset "better?" Is it the distinctive pattern of screening one finds in screened images?
Simply put, both inkjet and toner can offer a much wider color gamut and higher resolution images than offset. They can even match the resolution of text, an area where offset long held a distinct advantage.
To be sure, toner has that "shine" quality that some consider objectionable, but new toner technology with lower fusing temperatures (ah, does that mean we're going to have "cold fusion" soon?) has mitigated much of that problem.
Digital is still far from perfect. Getting high quality at high speed is a recent accomplishment, and control speed and consistency are still being fine tuned. But essentially, we're already there. The technology of digital print is no longer an issue. There will be lots of speed and consistency improvements over time, but few people think "quality" is the issue even with current technology. Now it's just a matter of acceptance and obsolescence.
Already, offset machines are starting to be replaced by digital ones. For the past decade or so, digital has supplemented offset, not replaced it. More recently, offset presses have been coming off the floors in favor of their digital counterparts. Some of those have been digital offset presses, but not many. That's a trend that will continue. Given the average lifespan of an offset press, it's likely by 2020 the majority of printing presses will be either toner based or ink-jet based, though it may take longer than that for digital to exceed offset's total finished page count. Then again with the page counts coming off of web-based digital presses, it may not take long. And my bet is that high speed ink-jet presses will make huge inroads between now and then.
We'll see.
SB
Timing is everything. Moments after posting this, I received a News Release from Kodak with the headline, "Kodak Announces Webcrafters Signs for PROSPER Press with Stream Technology."
SB
It isn't as though all offset presses will disappear by some arbitrary date: say 2020. But by then they will likely be relegated to special purposes: extremely long runs of static material, special in-line coatings and so on. After all, the company I worked for for 25 years still has a hundred year old Heidelberg windmill letterpress. In fact they have three letterpress machines used for numbering and die cutting. They still work fine and handle some work that can be handled profitably with very old technology.
And there are still small companies churning out letterpress work for invitations and other specialty work where the depth and feel of letterpress gives a "charm" factor to the finished piece.
But the truth is, digital will prevail. And specifically ink-jet is likely to ultimately take the bulk of the print market.
People still argue quality. I'm not sure why. The argument is that offset simply looks "better" than digital. Do the people who make this argument have some culturally induced blindness? In what way is offset "better?" Is it the distinctive pattern of screening one finds in screened images?
Simply put, both inkjet and toner can offer a much wider color gamut and higher resolution images than offset. They can even match the resolution of text, an area where offset long held a distinct advantage.
To be sure, toner has that "shine" quality that some consider objectionable, but new toner technology with lower fusing temperatures (ah, does that mean we're going to have "cold fusion" soon?) has mitigated much of that problem.
Digital is still far from perfect. Getting high quality at high speed is a recent accomplishment, and control speed and consistency are still being fine tuned. But essentially, we're already there. The technology of digital print is no longer an issue. There will be lots of speed and consistency improvements over time, but few people think "quality" is the issue even with current technology. Now it's just a matter of acceptance and obsolescence.
Already, offset machines are starting to be replaced by digital ones. For the past decade or so, digital has supplemented offset, not replaced it. More recently, offset presses have been coming off the floors in favor of their digital counterparts. Some of those have been digital offset presses, but not many. That's a trend that will continue. Given the average lifespan of an offset press, it's likely by 2020 the majority of printing presses will be either toner based or ink-jet based, though it may take longer than that for digital to exceed offset's total finished page count. Then again with the page counts coming off of web-based digital presses, it may not take long. And my bet is that high speed ink-jet presses will make huge inroads between now and then.
We'll see.
SB
Timing is everything. Moments after posting this, I received a News Release from Kodak with the headline, "Kodak Announces Webcrafters Signs for PROSPER Press with Stream Technology."
SB
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