Technical Details of T-Shirt Printing
Technology has come a long way in printing over the last couple of decades, especially in the field of T-shirt screen printing. This section discusses the difference and advantages of the different methods of T-shirt printing in the electronic world we live in.
Digital Printing
Digital printing is the newest form of quality T-shirt printing and it has some distinct advantages over traditional screen printing techniques. More...
Screen Printing
Also known as silk screening, screen printing is the oldest method of printing T-Shirts that uses a roller or squeegee to push ink through a screen stencil. More...
CMYK VS. RGB, What Color Mode Should You Use?
Most people not in the printing world have no idea of the difference between CMYK and RGB much less what the acronyms stand for. CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (K is an abbreviation for "Key" in "Key Plate" (a plate that puts the detail in an image normally done in Black). RGB stands for Red, Green, Blue, the colors associated with the additive color mixing in monitors and televisions.
Resolution - A Quick Reference
Many designers and printers agree that the standard for high resolution printing is 300dpi (300 dots per inch) at full size or 300ppi (pixels per inch in regards to digital file preparation). In our experience, we have made the following observations in real world applications: 1) Ammeter designers rarely get the necessary print resolution in their electronic file. 2) Since ink bleeds into fabric and people rarely look at T-Shirts up close, 300dpi DTG printing is unnecessary and, in the case of some printers, impossible. In our experience, anything over 225dpi is more than sufficient. 3) Although 300dpi may not be necessary, when you finally rasterize your image, it is nice to have extra resolution above 300dpi so that you can scale the design up if necessary (ex. for wall prints or banners) without making the print look too pixilated.
Combining these ideologies, it is probably best to retain at least 300 dpi for your T-Shirt prints. You should always check with your printer in regards to resolution and print size before setting your artwork up however. We, at Funny Graphic T-Shirts, currently uphold the policy of setting up our designs in Illustrator at the size of 14"x16" at 600 dpi for typical shirts. The typical print bed for DTG printers is usually 14"x16" and we give ourselves the extra resolution for up-scaling designs for banners and wall peels. It can also be helpful for unforeseen design alterations. You can always downsize a rasterized image but you can never up size an image without artifacts. We will eventually have an article on Funny Graphic T-Shirts about dealing with such situations in the future.
Design Template Summary
A Quick Reference for how to setup your print files
The logic on why we do this is discussed in other articles so here is how we setup our files:
Standard
- 14"x16" 300dpi RGB- Save as a non-interlaced *.PNG file
Super High Resolution - Allows for upscaling graphics larger than a T-Shirt
- 14"x16" 600dpi RGB- Save as a non-interlaced *.PNG file
