[nycdunz]

this goes to all you freelancers out there, I am curious as to what type of presses you guys recommended? I hear all kinds from offset, web press, digital, what are the differences and which is the best?

Also, do you guys think $50 for 1000 business cards and $75 for 5000 is a good price? Just for printing only...

I'm trying to look for a good local printer place to get all my stuff done, but want to get some feedback from you guys who've gone through this. Would appreciate some advice on what to look for, etc. If not i might go online to find one if you guys know of any respectable places online who has the best quality for the money and are dependable.

Thanks in advance

[art_director]

There are exceptions to every rule. That said offset is going to be your best quality. The presses are typically run by experienced pressmen who take pride in their work. Digital presses are sometimes run by experienced printing experts but, along with new technologies, has come a wave of 'printers' who offer digital printing at lower prices. Along with those lower prices can often come lesser quality. This has been my experience. IOW, mileage may vary.

The inexpensive prices you quote are either a digital press or an turn-and-burn operation. Some of those guys do a good job but customer service comes at a price.

Most of my work is printed offset however, in these times of tightening budgets, I have been in positions to use digital guys -- some, gulp, online. That route always scares me because you don't know what you're going to get in terms of print quality, color accuracy and customer service. In most cases these presses are run by total printing n00bs who don't give a rip about what the end product looks like. Think of it as Kinko's with better equipment but still run by North America's premier slackers.

One good online resource I've used is ModernPostcard.com -- they print most everything offset but their customer service leaves a lot to be desired. All their print jobs, to my knowledge, come with an aquious coating that improves the overall appearance provided you want that sort of look.

Some of the other online printers I've tried ( like the guys who print the club cards you see in hip bars / clubs / restaurants ) have been miserable experiences.

Finally,

Digital printing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Offset printing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Thorzdad]

Originally Posted by art_director 

...One good online resource I've used is ModernPostcard.com -- they print most everything offset but their customer service leaves a lot to be desired. All their print jobs, to my knowledge, come with an aquious coating that improves the overall appearance provided you want that sort of look.

I've used MP several times and have been very pleased with the quality of the results. Definitely, their customer service could use some improvement, though. On the other hand, they freely provide a very complete set of tools including ICC profiles for their presses, which greatly improves color-management in your workflow.

[art_director]

Originally Posted by Thorzdad 

On the other hand, they freely provide a very complete set of tools including ICC profiles for their presses, which greatly improves color-management in your workflow.

Something I neglected to mention. Thank you for the correction, Thorzdad.

[nycdunz]

i checked out modernpostcard and requested for a free sample pack, and finally got it in the mail, the samples look very high quality compared to the printers we have here locally.

Last week i paid $75 for 5000 business cards to get printed at a local offset press, and was very very upset with how it turned out, the colors were way off, the fonts were very blurry, it looks like they missed the registrations or something when aligning all the plates. I like to use thin fonts a lot on my business card designs and sometimes go down to even 6pt for the fontsize. I know some ppl told me that this is a bad idea since the press might miss the registration and then my text wont even show. But if that is the case, how are these brochures/flyers that I receive in the mail from professional corporations such as Honda, Infinity, Gap, Armani have such sharp thin text (even at very small sizes) in their designs to print with such quality? Where are these big corps taking their marketing stuff to get printed? Thats what I would like to know. And the samples I got from modernpostcard has the same high quality on par with the marketing material I get in my mailbox. But the results i get with my local printer is always inconsistant. I called to complain about it many times, and they always tell me it's not going to be accurate or consistant because my stuff is getting put up on a gang run with a bunch of other people's stuff, so that the overall color of whatever's on that one sheet will affect my colors, sigh, if this is true, does places like modernpostcard also do gangruns? I doubt they have runs with one business card only. Since its a big commercial press.

I'm just very concerned and picky on the quality of my work, so I would like to know what your experiences have been like with local printers, and online places such as modernpostcard. To me it seems like a good place to get my stuff printed since they do offer a colorkit and their color profile to download.

Also when you send your stuff off to an offset press, does it matter if you select:

US Web Coated SWOP v2
US Web Uncoated v2
US Sheetfed Coated v2
US Sheetfed Uncoated v2

Because I just have my color settings set to North American Prepress 2 and that defaults to a CMYK profile of US Web Coated SWOP v2... so i left it alone and never changed it... Unless I am suppose to use a specific one?

[Thorzdad]

Wow. A lot of stuff to cover...
Printing is very much a "you get what you pay for" proposition. The reason those "5000-for-$75" business cards looked like crap is because they probably were run off in bulk on a digital printer...basically a glorified inkjet....and not a 4-color offset press. The price may be right, but the quality almost always suffers. I'll bet that digital press hasn't been calibrated in ages, too.

The brochures and flyers you get in the mail...well, you pretty much answered your own question when you called them "professional corporations" They know their image is important and they aren't about to screw around with cut-rate solutions just to save a couple of bucks. They do things the right way, and that means full-scale offset printing. That means using match-colors when needed. And that means using trained professional designers who know how to get the best results from the offset process.

Your local printer is correct about the quality of your stuff. As long as you are getting a "free ride" ganged onto a larger job, you are going to be subject to the color balance and tolerances of that larger job. The only way to assure complete control over your work is to pay for your own press run, and then work with the printer to get the best out of his press.

As for color profiles, unless a press specifies a particular pre-set or provides a specific profile for their presses (such as the ones Modernpostcard provides) I leave everything tagged as Photoshop5 CMYK. It's about the widest-gamut CMYK profile you can use. My rule of thumb is to do what I can on my end to make the pre-press work as uneventful as possible. When you start using highly specific profiles like the ones you mention, you are already limiting things. Providing my work in as generic and wide-gamut profile as possible (like Photoshop5) gives the pre-press people room to tweek, if necessary. HOWEVER...always ask your printer up-front how they want files prepared.

Your printer is your partner. It pays huge dividends to talk to them and work with them. They want to give you the best quality stuff possible and most will bend over backwards to give it to you. If you talk to them...explain what you're after...a good printer will be able to steer you in the right direction.

IM or email me and I can discuss this further. I could fill up this whole forum on this subject.

[art_director]

Originally Posted by Thorzdad 

Wow. A lot of stuff to cover...
Printing is very much a "you get what you pay for" proposition. The reason those "5000-for-$75" business cards looked like crap is because they probably were run off in bulk on a digital printer...basically a glorified inkjet....and not a 4-color offset press. The price may be right, but the quality almost always suffers. I'll bet that digital press hasn't been calibrated in ages, too.

The brochures and flyers you get in the mail...well, you pretty much answered your own question when you called them "professional corporations" They know their image is important and they aren't about to screw around with cut-rate solutions just to save a couple of bucks. They do things the right way, and that means full-scale offset printing. That means using match-colors when needed. And that means using trained professional designers who know how to get the best results from the offset process.

Your local printer is correct about the quality of your stuff. As long as you are getting a "free ride" ganged onto a larger job, you are going to be subject to the color balance and tolerances of that larger job. The only way to assure complete control over your work is to pay for your own press run, and then work with the printer to get the best out of his press.

As for color profiles, unless a press specifies a particular pre-set or provides a specific profile for their presses (such as the ones Modernpostcard provides) I leave everything tagged as Photoshop5 CMYK. It's about the widest-gamut CMYK profile you can use. My rule of thumb is to do what I can on my end to make the pre-press work as uneventful as possible. When you start using highly specific profiles like the ones you mention, you are already limiting things. Providing my work in as generic and wide-gamut profile as possible (like Photoshop5) gives the pre-press people room to tweek, if necessary. HOWEVER...always ask your printer up-front how they want files prepared.

Your printer is your partner. It pays huge dividends to talk to them and work with them. They want to give you the best quality stuff possible and most will bend over backwards to give it to you. If you talk to them...explain what you're after...a good printer will be able to steer you in the right direction.

IM or email me and I can discuss this further. I could fill up this whole forum on this subject.

couldn't say it any better than Thorsdad just did. pay particular attention to the paragraph about your printer being your partner. nothing could be more true.

students perusing this board:

in the world of print your best friends are (in random order):

- your printer
- your print producer
- your retoucher
- your production people

respect all these people. never throw them in front of the bus. bend over backward for them, fight for their raises and promotions. respect them. they are integral to your success / failure. leave them behind / sheet on them and you will fail -- guaranteed.

[malcouk]

Pretty sad when a customer is unhappy with their job. Lots of points in this post, registered here just to give my view. I am a Printer in the UK. First off I can't believe that anybody can print 5000, (are these full colour ie CMYK) business cards for 75 bucks and stay in business. There are a number of issues here. Large companies such as Honda will have many thousands printed, they will have been produced on multi million dollar machine with computer control and little human intervention. The press will automatically compensate for paper stretch between each color unit, C,M,Y & K, and continually adjust the inking ducts after the page has been scanned as each sample is checked to ensure that calibrated colors are maintained. The color profile used depends on the press to be used. SWOP is for Web Offset Press and will allow for the dot gain of the press. This is the amount that the dot will spread on the sheet and increase, say a 20% dot to 22%, or a 90% dot to 100%. Many smaller local printers will typically run a 2 color press and very often gain a price advantage from using polyester plates rather than metal. Each colour will have to be changed between passes and the press set up very accurately for good registration. The experience and skills of the pressman running these presses are paramount to ensure good results and in my experience will be hard pressed to match the quality, no matter how good the pressman, of the very big, 4 and 8 colour machines. The aqueous coating refered to earlier in the post is normally applied to stop the ink from rubbing and not noramlly for its finishing qualities. In England, companies specialising in CMYK printing will gang print or run many orders together on one sheet. As these companies normally use very large and expensive presses the results are excellent, producing good register even down to 4 point text.
The use of small point sizes cannot be recommended however. Most people over the age of 40 cannot read 6 point text even when printed in black only. It is worth doing your calculations on how many dots will create the letter thickness on small point sizes. Try zooming in to your thin letters, estimate how thick it is. Assuming that the printer is using a 175 line screen, the horizontal of the letter T in Times Regular, is only one two hundred and fiftieth of an inch deep. That is only a fraction of a dot.
Hope this bit help.

[inkhead]

Actually I'd like to chime in here. I'ved used at least 50 different printers, as well as using in house 200k + printers at work. I spend 90% of my day with printers. Getting good digital vs. offset is really a matter of where you live or send your print jobs to. I find in California most print companies have 1million + digital printers which are better than offset printers even for full-bleed and perfect alignment on the front and back (really amazing that they beat offset) On the east coast many of the printers won't try digital, because "nothing, could be the old wise ways lol" so east coast you would be better getting offset, because most printers there just have a fire GL as their digital printer.

As for 1000 business cards for $75, it seems crazy, but the BEST BUSINESS CARDS I ever bought were digitally printed 1000 for $34 from zooprinting.com There are quite a few digital printers (buy print magazine and look in the back) that have seemly crazy deals but have fantastic full RGB 600dpi, front and back printing.

I know it hurts the little guy, but big companies seem to have better printer, and a better order system..

[inkhead]

I disagree with 1000 card for cheep meaning "you get what you pay for" I've had the expensive cards, and cheep ones, and the companies that do HUGE orders on the cheep ones or small orders, usually have better color calibration, and the prints are more consistant. They only thing about many really cheap digital places is they may only offer 2-3 paper choices, but don't discount a company just because they have excellent prices. Print magazine did a review, and the top 2 printers (in quality, were the cheapest printers in the industry!!)

[art_director]

Of the online printers I've used only one has been worth their salt -- Modern Postcard. Their customer support isn't so hot but the quality was worth the expense.

The worst I've worked with was Industry in Texas. Poor quality -- registration was off, front and back of piece didn't allign properly and the customer service was miserable. Would never use them again.

Most of my jobs are on a larger scale. I print much of my work with one printer here in Mpls. They're not the cheapest but nobody can touch them on quality.

Given the choice I'll go offset over digital every day of the week.