Digital printing accounts for approximately 9% of the 45 trillion pages printed (2005 figure) around the world.

Printing at home or in an office or engineering environment is subdivided into:

* small format (up to ledger size paper sheets), as used in business offices and libraries
* wide format (up to 3' or 914mm wide rolls of paper), as used in drafting and design establishments.

Some of the more common printing technologies are

* line printing-where pre-formed characters are applied to the paper by lines
* daisy wheel-where pre-formed characters are applied individually
* dot-matrix-which produces arbitrary patterns of dots with an array of printing studs
* heat transfer-like early fax machines or modern receipt printers that apply heat to special paper, which turns black to form the printed image
* blueprint-and related chemical technologies
* inkjet-including bubble-jet-where ink is sprayed onto the paper to create the desired image
* laser-where toner consisting primarily of polymer with pigment of the desired colours is melted and applied directly to the paper to create the desired image.

Vendors typically stress the total cost to operate the equipment, involving complex calculations that include all cost factors involved in the operation as well as the capital equipment costs, amortization, etc. Leaflet Printing is commonly requested by companies as a digital printing service. For the most part, toner systems beat inkjet in the long run, whereas inkjets are less expensive in the initial purchase price.