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Is Indigo Digital Offset worth the extra time and money over a nice laser print on nice paper?

I'm putting together a leave behind portfolio booklet.

Indigo is quite impressive, especially on matte. You should ask your printer if they have any spot colours in stock for their Indigo. Because that might make the difference. Indigos can print white ink which might be really striking. But it wouldn't be worth it price-wise if they had to order in the spot colour just for your job. Maybe print indigo cover and a few inserts and the rest laser?

What's Indigo exactly? I've been looking for a replacement
for Velox (AKA "RC Paper") for a long time (for making max-
quality type specimens). Can somebody show a hi-res scan of
black-on-white text with Indigo?

hhp

Indigo is a digital printing machine, very offset-like in quality. Successive generations have been improving a lot. It’s an ideal way to produce small runs.

Viz: http://h10088.www1.hp.com/cda/gap/display/main/index.jsp?zn=gap&cp=20000...

Indigo uses paper that has been chemically optimized for it. As it is a lot of paper companies offer different qualities, so there is a wide range of stock available (at least that is the case in the Netherlands).

The latest generations of Indigo’s can print white with a special formula. Depending on the design and stock several runs are needed to get decent coverage.

http://whattheythink.com/news/44305-hp-expands-with-first-ever-white-ink...

Definitely Indigo is much better than laser printing. It's almost as good as high quality offset print. And it doesn't suffer from ink spread. As tmac pointed out, it is very good in matte paper.

I'll have to figure out how to get a sample from a local shop.

> almost as good as high quality offset print.

The thing is, Velox was higher quality than high-quality offset. :-/

hhp

I have found on Indigo prints there is a yellow haze (four color) in some instances and some color shift. Don't know how to quantify it, it just seems to exist to my eye. Also I have seen splotchy printing on solids (that was three years ago and I do not know if they have corrected it but I have been hesitant to try again). Overall it is quite nice and it does allow, at least with my printer, each piece to be personalized (I have never tried this though).

I've bought a lot of Indigo printing over the last few years, and I have to say I'm impressed. Color is right on and you can't beat the price.

I've been using Imagers and the quality and service can't be beat.

> splotchy printing on solids

I think that's a continuing problem, although perhaps it's been improved over the years. But when I'm designing a piece that'll be printed that way I try to avoid large areas of solid color.

>Velox was higher quality than high-quality offset.

I tought Velox was some kind of negative photo paper.

> splotchy printing on solids

We've been placing quite a lot of our work recently on Indigo machines. Many pieces use areas of flood colour and have yet come across this problem. I know that on older digital presses flat colour, especially blues/pure cyan, banded horribly.

Give the printer a sample of your work I'm sure they will send you a free proof off the machines.

Martin

I am using the Indigo on a new project and will see how it pans out. Got my fingers crossed.

And you are correct Martin, I found the "splotchy problems" primarily on blues.