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Use Layer Styles to Enhance Inkjet-to-Garment Artwork |
Photoshop’s powerful tool applies text fills, bevels and other effects that can enhance the inkjet output of any full-color image.
 Perhaps the best thing about digital direct-to-garment inkjet printers
is the ease with which an operator can print full-color images on a
garment. It's essentially push-button printing; simply select File >
Print in whatever graphics program you're using, and the machine
delivers a full-color printed shirt in a minute or two — or several.
But, is it really that easy? Well, yes and no. There are a few tricks
to learn about tweaking your artwork to produce a superior inkjet
garment print.
Of course, you also should know how to properly prepare a garment for
inkjet printing — which differs for darks and lights, and among various
types of fabric — and how to properly cure an inkjet printed shirt,
etc. But those are subjects for another column.
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Solving Separation Anxiety |
Don’t have a clue about how to do separations? Relax — it's not as complicated as you may think.
Before today's sophisticated separation software hit the market,
decorators could literally spend days creating a sin-gle set of seps.
Thankfully, industry-specific software has made the job much simpler.
In fact, an experienced decorator can create seps for a job in minutes.
With that in mind, you might be wondering whether you should bring the
job of creating separations in house.
For the uninitiated, the thought of doing your own separations may be
as intimidating as the prospect of building your own automatic press
from scratch. In reality, it's not as overwhelming as you might think.
Undoubtedly, it takes practice and skill to make high-quality
separations that create great-looking prints. But armed with the right
tools and knowledge, it's a job that's well within your reach.
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Design Tips for Great Direct-to-Garment Prints |
Learn how to optimize artwork with these six, easy-to-follow steps.
 During the course of 16 years creating artwork and separations for screen printing, my company, Great Dane Graphics, has witnessed plenty of change — but none so transformative as the influx of digital direct-to-garment inkjet printers. The beauty of these machines is that setup times are a thing of the past; also, there are no films needed, no screens to burn, no messy mulsion. You just make your art file look good and print it. And there’s the key to using digital direct-to-garment printers — making your art file look good.
Some art files might seem fine when you first open them, but getting top quality inkjet prints on fabric can require quite a few adjustments in your graphics software. The good news is that once you learn these steps for optimizing artwork, they’ll become second nature to you, and you’ll be able to open files and maximize them for printing in 30 seconds or so.
Optimizing artwork requires some color correction, but not high-end, incredibly complex adjustments. I’m talking about simple corrections that help you make more money. In other words, the following suggestions aren’t academic, ivory tower suggestions. They’re real-world tips for real-world printing.
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How To Choose The Right RIP |
Choosing the right raster image processor ensures that you get top-quality films from your computer output device.
If you have no idea what a RIP is, even though you may use one every day, you are not alone. A RIP may be one of the least understood tools in the screen printing industry. What you may or may not know is that every time you send an art file to a printer, a RIP acts as an intermediary, essentially ensuring the job gets translated in proper computer language from image file to output. If you’re one of the many decorators who is totally in the dark about how RIPs work, here’s what you need to know.
A RIP (or raster image processor) is the software connection between your computer and your output device that, hopefully, gives you the increased control required to produce vibrant prints like this colorful pirate.
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How to Create a Digital Underbase for a Direct-to-Garment Printer |
Follow these procedures to lay the foundation for great inkjet prints.
The secret to producing the best possible quality dark shirt print with a digital direct-to-garment printer relies on your ability to create a good underbase. This ensures the print has a soft hand and the colors are vibrant. Creating an underbase is not difficult, but most people don’t know how to do it. They rely on the RIP software that came with their printer. RIP is an acronym that stands for raster image processor, and not all RIPs automatically create a good underbase for digital direct-to-garment printing. This article will show you how to control your RIP to produce the best prints from your inkjet garment printer.
Once you know which tools to use, it’s pretty simple. For example, if you want to print bright, fire engine red on a dark shirt, you will need a lot of white on your base channel under the red — at a density somewhere between 80 to 100%. However, if you intend to print a darker shade of red, your underbase may need to be only 40% to 50% as dense. You learn from experience where to boost the underbase and how to handle certain colors. I create my underbases exactly the same way 90% of the time; however, with certain colors like reds, you may have to go in and make some adjustments.
Digitally printing the bright red portions of this fire truck — especially on a dark garment —
requires a fairly heavy white underbase and, possibly, some highlight white on top.
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