Weymouth, MA - Advances in production digital printing toners and inks are creating new opportunities to capture high value pages that require more than traditional CMYK-based colors. The powerful combination of special effects (white, clear, textures, metallic, fluorescents, etc.) with the unique capabilities of digital printing (personalized and on-demand production) is opening up new applications traditionally produced with offset presses and enabling printers to add value to jobs and have a competitive differentiation.

The market expansion over the last few years has been dramatic with new in-line digital presses and off-line devices (mostly leveraging UV inkjet technologies) that can print a growing range of innovative effects on larger sheets with greater productivity.

“We are in the early days of digital print enhancement, but there are many questions up and down the industry value chain” stated Jim Hamilton, Group Director at InfoTrends. 

• Many print service providers are interested in these systems, but are trying to understand how to market, price, and sell value-added special effects

• Most graphic designers and print buyers are unaware that digital print has these capabilities

• OEMs and system vendors are focusing on how best to allocate R&D investments and accelerate market adoption for digital print enhancement

The new InfoTrends multi-client study “Beyond CMYK: The Use of Special Effects in Digital Printing” will explore this topic through extensive research with print service providers and print buyers in the U.S. and Western Europe (U.K., France, Germany). Goals of the study include: 

• Showing digital print enhancement samples to print customers and asking about their preferences, perceived value, and must-have requirements

• Identifying related requirements (paper, coverage, sheet size, finishing, variable data) for print enhancement on commercial, direct mail, and publishing applications

• Modeling the business case/ROI for digital print enhancement systems (investment, running costs, pricing, job mix/volume)

• Determining the market size and total available market for in-line and off-line digital print enhancement systems and output (pages, systems, revenue)

• Helping printer technology vendors with product development decisions and accelerating market adoption

For more information on the Beyond CMYK: The Use of Special Effects in Digital Printing study, please visit our online brochure, contact Deanna Flanick at 973 985 2431 or at [email protected].