Printing

At Super Print we offer a wide range of lithographic and digital printing throughout the UK whether it’s for leaflets, flyers, business cards, stationery, brochures or posters.

Here’s a brief overview of the printing process. To find out more about about a particular product use the menu on the left.

What is lithographic printing?

The lithographic printing process is a traditional process typically used for larger print runs, usually for at least a quantity of 500+. The lithographic printing process consists making an imprint on a roller, covering the roller in ink and duplicating the impression on paper over and over with stunning results and at high speed.

How does digital artwork get from being a file to being printed matter?

Artwork is separated into the number of colours required, i.e full colour would typically be separated into four colours, cyan, magenta, yellow and black. These four colours make up thousands of colour variations. A clever piece of hardware and software ‘rips’ the artwork into the required colours and separates each colour onto it’s own plate, each plate is ‘charged’ with UV light which burns an impression on to the plate made up of lots of tint dots, dots on each plate are slightly different. The plates are placed onto separate rollers. Each roller is filled with it’s own colour to represent cyan, magenta, yellow and black.

The ink then sticks to the parts of the plate charged by UV, the roller turns and the paper is left with an impression. Dots on each plate can be in very different positions, it’s the positioning of dots which makes up the thousands of different colours possible.

Is lithographic printing the best option?

Depending on your requirement lithographic printing looks stunning and is very cost effective, it’s not recommended to print lithographically for small quantities of print due to the setup costs.

What is digital printing?

The digital printing process is similar to lithographic printing in that it places lots of tiny dots onto the paper by this done directly from an ink cartridge, there are no rollers or plates. A digital printer is a larger scale version of an ink jet printer you may use at home or in the office, the difference being the quality.

Professional digital printing machines consist of lots of different shades of ink to make up the thousands of different colours.

Is digital better than lithographic printing?

The quality of professional digital printing machines are very similar to lithographic printing. The advantage comes for smaller runs which may only be a quantity of one. This makes digital very cost effective and much cheaper for smaller quantities and can be turned around quicker, however, due to running costs like the ink for quantities of between 250–500+ digital can be very expensive in comparison to lithographic.

This is a very brief overview of the two main processes. Find out more information about lithographic printing and digital printing.

If you’re looking for a low cost printing company in any of the following locations try Super Print, we can save you an average of 55% and all our orders include FREE UK delivery.

Printing for clients throughout the UK including;

Aylesbury