How to make Artwork for a T-shirt printer.
Personalizing Artwork for a t-shirt a printer.
As a t-shirt printer is what I would expect for from a customer that supplied artwork.
The artwork should be made to the same size as the print for t-shirt printing; this could be A3 portrait. The bitmap artwork has a resolution of 300 dpi or vectored artwork. The colours are made from CMYK and supplied with a transparent background.
Let’s examine each sentence in turn.
Same Size Artwork
The “same size” is a general principle in the t-shirt printing industry that the artwork is roughly the same size as the print. If the size of the print is unknown, then make the artwork bigger than the printed object. The printer can always reduce with no loss of quality while enlarging the artwork is problematic.
A3 Portrait
A3 is a paper size which has become a unit of area. The measurement is 297mm x 420mm. There are other sizes see the glossary.
Bitmaps
A Bitmap is for the t-shirt printer is a closed file. The printer has no opportunity to change or “tweak” the artwork supplied. If a bitmap must be used then for the best results a 300 dpi resolution should be used and at the same size as the print at will appear on the t-shirt. The artwork should be made in such a way that the background is removed and transparent; the background represents the t-shirt or garment we are printing upon. If anything is left in the background, it will be printed.
Resolution
The resolution of the bitmap t-shirt artwork should be no lower than 300 dpi. What is dpi; it means “dots per inch”. Imagine a picture is made up of little small squares, grouping them together in one-inch squares would get 300 along the width and 300 along the height. All t-shirt printing is done at 300 dpi while images made for computers are made at 72 dpi.
Vectored Artwork
Vectored Graphic or artwork can be seen as a line or curve between two dots or nodes to create shapes. Artwork should where ever possible should be made as a vectored artwork. Programmes such as Coreldraw and Adobe Illustrator can be used for this, there are others, but these are the most popular. Vectored artwork is the best because; firstly it allows the printer to make adjustments to your artwork, concerning colour correction or scaling the image or “tweaking” the design in some way to aid the printing process.
CMYK
CMYK means Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and blacK. These four colours mixed together makes full-colour printing. It is important to remember that not all the colours we can see with our eyes in the real world can be represented in CMYK. The design process should take this into account.
Transparent Background
The background is transparent because this is the t-shirt. I find it useful to work with a layer of flat colour which represents the t-shirt colour. Which is removed before sending to the printer. There is confusion when viewing artwork on a computer because the computer always shows the graphic on a white background, and it is not clear if the background is transparent or not
Conclusion
Contact usThis description is how we prepare our artwork for the printing machines. Although it might seem hard; the secret about artwork and printing is preparation. Have everything just right before you start. If this is too much to take in then send us what you have and we sort it out for you.
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