How to Make Sure Your T-Shirt Prints Correctly
If you've been working on your t-shirt design for a while, you can probably already picture what the finished product will look like. But, if you want your design to come out exactly as you imagined it, you'll need to prepare your print file correctly. Here are three print file tips that will help you make sure your printed t-shirt comes out right.
Make Sure It's High Resolution
One of the biggest mistakes first-time t-shirt designers make is using a print design with a low resolution. When you're designing artwork to print on a t-shirt, the printer will usually give you a maximum print area to work with — for example, 20x20 cm. What many beginner designers don't realise is that there's also another component to design size — resolution. Resolution refers to the number of pixels or dots in each inch of your design. If you design your t-shirt at 20x20 cm with only 75 dots per inch (DPI) for example, those dots will be stretched when printing, making your overall design look blurry. That's why it's best to design your artwork at 300 DPI, especially if it's detailed. That way, it won't need to be scaled up during printing.
Make Sure It Has a Transparent Background
Another common error that causes t-shirt misprinting is leaving a solid colour background on your image. For example, you may think that if you're printing on a black t-shirt, you should give your design a black background so it blends in. However, you'll be surprised to learn that a design with a black background won't blend in at all. When printing on black garments, a white under-base is printed first. As a result, the final black background printing will be lighter than the black of your t-shirt, leaving you with a big rectangle around your design. The same goes for leaving a white background on white garments too. So, before you export your design from Photoshop, make sure you hide the background layer and export the file as a PNG. This preserves the transparency and makes sure your design pops out on the shirt.
Make Sure You Check Your Colours
When you're designing artwork to display on like, you'll typically use the RGB colour format in Photoshop — red, green, blue. However, when you're designing direct-to-garment prints, it's far better to use CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, and K for black). CMYK is the format used for printing, and many RGB colours can't be replicated in CMYK. As such, you should convert your file to CMYK before you send it to your printer so you can double-check that all your colours will look good. Of course, there'll still be some variation between your screen and the final print. If you want to avoid that, you can use by Pantone colour code swatches to use as references.
To learn more about online t-shirt printing, contact a company in your area.
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