Printing
Here are some tips and thoughts about printing a PLFS™.
Quality vs. Cost vs. Ease
PLFSs™ are intended balance cost, ease of creation and output quality. The automated processes that generate a PLFS™ have limitations in the quality they produce. While most would agree that the quality procuded is sufficient for a listing feature sheet, they are not post-card or magazine quality. The resolution of some components will look grainy when you look closely. Text that is embedded in images such as the header and footer will not be as sharp as you see in a postcard or magazine. This is a limitation of the technology being used that allows such a high level of cost effective simplicity. If you need magazine quality a feature sheet would have to be manually created using the appropriate tool. We do not provide this service as it is not cost effective and would in most cases result in a feature sheet costing over $100 each instead of $10. Digital colour copies are the most cost effective way to produce high quality copies at the most reasonable cost. Unfortunately digital copies not do full bleed (print colour to the very edge of the paper). There will always be a small white border along the outside. To get full blead they actually print on a larger sheet of paper and then trim it with a cutter. Looks nicer but costs a lot more per piece.
Copy House Printing vs. Home/Office Printing
Just because PLFSs™ can be printed on ANY printer, doesn’t mean they should be. Because they are full colour they use a lot of ink. To put it in perspective consider this. True Costs of Printing A company like HP rates a colour toner cartridge by the number of sheets it will produce based on 5% colour coverage. A PLFS™ uses 100% colour coverage. So while your home colour laser printer that provides for 2000 sheets per $150 in cartridges x 4 colours works out to $0.30 per sheet that is assuming 5% coverage. A PLFS™ would cost you about $3 per sheet when you factor in full coverage and overlay of colours etc. Sending out to a print shop can cost you as little as $0.50 per sheet when printing smaller volumes. If you were to print 500 or more for something like a mail drop you would want to go to a print shop. We would also recommend spending the money to get a manually created feature sheet which which would provide a higher resolution. Here is our recommended order of printing method choice (from most preferred to least):
- Copy Company - Digital Colour Copier (read suggestions here)
- Home/Office Colour Laser Printer
- Home/Office Colour Inkjet Printer
- Copy Company - analog colour copier/colour photo copy
- Black and White Laser Printer
- Black and White Inkjet Printer
Differences Between Home/Office Laser Printers
Different laser printers will produce different output quality. For example a $250 HP 2600 home colour laser printer produces a better output than an $2500 Kyocera Office Colour Laser printer. You may want to try printing to a couple of different printers to determine which procdues the best quality for you.
Optional » Copy Shop Suggestions & Online Ordering
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