Monday, December 28, 2009

Printing Services - Over The Years

By Dean Smith

When it comes to spreading info to a great number of people, print is one of the most popular media. With the passage of time the printing services industry has become big vastly & has evolved to its present form of a diversified industry. Today it addresses a wide range of demands of customers, which goes much more than printing.

Bulk printing services first originated somewhere around the--00's when Gutenberg invented the first printing press and the whole concept of relief printing came into being. In relief printing the printed impression appears elevated from the base, just as it exists in a rubber stamp. Relief printing is rarely in use nowadays, though there are still some situations where it is used.

Technology has always been a driving force behind changes in printing techniques that have been embraced down the years. Modern printing methods have advanced to a great extent, and each technique has its own role and function. Most customers are in fact bewildered by the abundance of printing options available to them.

One of the most popular printing methods in the industry today is offset printing. In this method, the image is transferred onto paper from a metal plate on which the matter is first printed by the use of small amount of ink. This inexpensive and fast technique of printing is highly favoured and used when bulk printing is needed.

Other well known forms of printing that have developed over time are electrostatic printing, which can be compared to photocopying, and thermal printing, which creates the print by heating coated thermal paper in select areas.

However, digital printing is the latest technological advancement in this field. As the name tells you, in this method, images are created on a computer, which are then checked for accuracy and are finally printed. This mode is quick and error free, but is appropriate usually for limited prints. As this method allows each print to be customized it has resulted in some innovative uses like computer form printing, where documents like bills and receipts are printed on a standard format but with differing contents for each client.

Printing services took another leap when the world wide web started gaining popularity. There are a lot of firms in the market now, who permit you to place orders and modify prints straight through their websites, which is offering excellent convenience to the customers.

Printing has always taken giant leaps every time there has been a technological innovation. The good news is that this trend is not going to slow down in the coming years and you will keep seeing changes bring down the costs and improve the process.

About the Author:

No comments:

Post a Comment