Top tips for a good t-shirt print
Dont get into bother preparing an image for screen-printing with our handy guide. It could save you time and effort!
The main thing to remember is that we will need a large image to be able to print properly. There is no 'magic' fix for a small image, so if you've drawn something on the back of a postage stamp it is unlikely to look too good when made big.
We recomend creating and submitting artwork at 300dpi, If you take something at 72dpi (normal internet resolution) and size it up it may look very blocky when printed.
Try printing the image out on your home printer if you are unsure. An image might look fine on screen, but it may not print well since a monitors resolution (lines per inch) is different to a printers (dots per inch). Normally the image is going to print how it looks when you magnify it to 150%.
Something simple?
Your printed garment is for the most part an advertising tool, whether its advertising your band, club or the fact the man being sick in the dustbin he's been handcuffed to is getting married soon. With this in mind it is usually best to have a simple but bold image emblazoned across your shirt that people will notice at a distance. If you want extra loudness we can print in flourescent, glow-in-the-dark or even give your image a gloss finish!
Small detail
Pictures with small line details may lose some quality when being printed as it is not possible to reproduce anything thinner than 0.5mm. This is less of a problem printing Dark ink onto light garments since we can use a higher mesh count (the number of nylon lines that make a mesh, determines ink thickness and definition).
Since we are pushing ink through mesh we can only print blocks of colour so anything that has dithering in it (gradual colour change) will be amended to print only one as in this example detail:
Although, if you want something that has a lot of fading colour you can always try half-tone printing. This is how newspapers and magazines are printed, whereby tiny dots make up the image when viewed from reading distance.
This detail shows a one colour (blue) image that appears to have more shades in it using this method.
**Remember, the more colours in the image the more it will cost!!