Litho And Digital Printing
Welcome to Mcgilvray Printers
Mcgilvray Printers Ltd (previously Thomas Mcglilvray & Sons) is a Litho & Digital printer with it's roots going back to the year 1855. In our opinion, the only way to achieve such longevity is to ensure that as a business we are completely upfront with our customers and focus equally on the quality, price and service.
An introduction to how Litho Printing Works
Litho printing short for Lithography printing, is where the image or text of the content you want to produce is placed on an metal plate which is then covered in ink and used for printing. This process can be used to print on paper, card, plastic etc.
The paper or plastic receiving the image or text you want to print is placed against the plate and the ink is absorbed. One of the main advantages with Litho printing over digital printing is the range of colours that can be achieved. If a client requires a particular colour (often known as a spot colour) then this can be achieved using Pantone colour. Basically this is a colour created from a palette of 18 basic colours so any shade is possible, where as digital printing relies of the process colours CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow & Black) and not all colours can be achieved with this mix. It takes a high degree of experience to make sure the ink is mixed correctly and placed in the right order.
Litho printing is widely used for printing catalogues, brochures and posters etc because of the higher quality results and the faster turnaround. Whilst the setup is slightly longer than a digital printer, it is quicker to do higher quantities of high quality repeat items.
Digital Printing
Digital printing is the process of printing digital-based text and images directly onto a variety of media, i.e uncoated paper, glossy papers, canvas, plastics etc. There is no need for a printing plate, unlike Litho Printing. Digital files such as PDFs or desktop publishing files can be sent directly to the digital printer
Digital printing vs. Litho printing
Digital printing differs from Litho printing because digital printing machines do not require printing plates. Instead of using metal plates to transfer an image, digital printers print the image directly onto the media
Digital printing is evolving quickly, and the output quality is continuously improving.. These improvements are delivering print quality that is now very close to the quality achieved by Litho printing.. Digital printing offer additional advantages, including:
• print-on-demand
• cost-effective short runs
• fast turnarounds
