How to Choose a Print Service Provider

The wide range of paper-based media available for digital inkjet makes selecting the right paper type, size, and weight critical to meeting your creative expectations. Evaluating the media options a print provider offers can go a long way to helping you decide whether a partnership is right for what you’re looking to achieve with digital inkjet. Some printers may have a standard house sheet while others may have a more expansive range of media options. 

“Your print provider may have specific paper recommendations for different types of jobs — such as direct mail marketing, self-mailers, commercial marketing collateral, books, bills, and letter mail — but ultimately you need to define your own requirements,” write Gooding and Schilling. 

What’s more, investigating the types of media a print provider offers can also lead to productive conversations about the best paper type for a specific application and future digital inkjet projects. 

A reference chart demonstrates the print quality of a particular paper on a specific press to determine the boundary conditions of your design. Elements such as design color space, minimum text and line weights, halftones, solids, color fidelity, and showthrough are all important factors to review to ascertain whether a paper and press combination is right for your project. 

“Ask for a reference chart on each of the substrates you’re considering for your job,” explain Gooding and Schilling. “Keep them on file for future projects and print quality evaluations.” 

A tint book is essentially a swatchbook demonstrating how solid blocks of color will appear once printed on various paper and ink combinations. These print samples will help simplify and streamline the color matching process by showcasing the degree of color tint when moving to CMYK process colors. 

“If your designs require any type of Pantone^® or other spot-color matching system, it is wise to ask your print provider to provide a tint book,” write Gooding and Schilling. “ If you are using a post-coating, make sure to have the tint book coated as well, since coatings can affect the colors in the finished product.” 

Good and Schilling also recommend requesting a tint book for each kind of press used in a project. 

Maximizing the outstanding print and color quality of digital inkjet requires the ability to print vibrant, high-quality images. As such, it’s best practice to request that a potential print partner produce images in a wide range of contexts to help account for as many variables as possible. Some of these print contexts include: 

• Printing images on various paper types, such as uncoated, coated, inkjet coated, and inkjet treated to see which will best suit your print requirements

• Printing images on different substrates, like polyesters and plastics to see how images are produced on non-paper media

• Printing images with all available ink types, as some printers may use more than one type of ink chemistry within their shop

• Printing images under the resolution and speed that mimics how the job will run during actual production

“Just remember MIM,” write Gooding and Schilling. “Machine details, ink chemistry, and compatible media — the trifecta of inkjet success.” 

While these considerations are a good start toward opening a clear line of communication with a potential print partner to better understand if they’re a good fit for your digital inkjet needs, there’s so much more to choosing your ideal printer.