The Great (Digital) Plate Debate

Direct-to-polyester Plate
"In the past five years, there's been a boom in the use of direct-to-polyester plates by small commercial printers," says Stewart Gallup, product manager of digital systems at ABDick. "It allows them to get high-quality output faster, and at a lower cost, than with traditional plates. The print quality of a polyester plate as compared to metal is almost identical at this level of printing, so the benefit is not only having the same quality level, but higher throughput and the ability to turn jobs around faster."