Both look identical in a product photograph on day one. They diverge in a kitchen.

What lithography actually is

The artwork is offset printed onto a flat sheet of tinplate and cured, and only then is the sheet cut and formed into a tin. The ink is on the metal before the tin exists.

So the print wraps around corners with no join, there is no edge anywhere, and nothing can lift, bubble or peel. It is also why the design has to be laid out for the specific shape before anything is printed.

What a label is

A printed paper or vinyl wrap applied to a finished plain tin. Fast, flexible, and much cheaper at low volumes because there are no printing plates to make.

It has an edge. In a kitchen — steam, damp cloths, a shelf above a kettle — that edge lifts within months, and once a corner has gone the rest follows quickly.

Which one you should buy

Volume decides it honestly. Below a certain run, the plate setup for litho costs more than the entire label job and a label is the sensible choice. Above it, litho is better in every respect and often the same money or less per unit.

Ask your supplier where that line falls for your quantity. Anybody who will not tell you is selling you the one that suits them.

Designing for litho

Tell the printer the shape first. A layout that works around a cylinder does not simply transfer to a square tin with radiused corners.

Ask to see where the side seam and the base roll fall, so nothing important lands on them. And ask whether the plates will be held, because a reorder that nearly matches is worse on a shelf than one that obviously does not.