Creatiprint — custom apparel printing and | creatiprint.com

Creatiprint — custom apparel printing and | creatiprint.com

Preparing artwork that actually prints

Whether a print survives washing is decided before the order is placed: resolution at final size, colour mode and the limits of the chosen method.

Vector versus raster is the first fork. Vector artwork is stored as paths and scales to any print size without loss, so logos, type and line work should be vector whenever possible. Raster art is pixels, and the usual minimum is 300 dpi at final print size — not at the size it happens to be on your screen.

Size the file to the print area before export. The four common areas are the left chest at roughly 9 x 11 cm, the full front and full back at roughly 30 x 40 cm, and the sleeve at roughly 8 x 10 cm; a full-front raster file needs to hold 300 dpi across the whole 30 x 40 cm, and a design drawn for that area cannot simply be shrunk to a left chest without losing detail.

The signature mark of this site, drawn as a plate

On narrow screens, swipe or scroll the plate sideways.

Colour mode depends on the method. DTG prints in CMYK and lays a white underbase on dark garments so the colours stay opaque. Screen printing uses spot colours taken from a physical swatch — a brand hex colour is a starting point rather than a guarantee of an exact match, so critical colours should be approved against the swatch.

Respect each method's hard limits. Vinyl is a solid-colour film: no fine detail, no gradients, no photographs, and it does not stretch with the fabric. Embroidery is priced by stitch count, so over-dense artwork costs more and sews stiff; a typical left-chest logo sits at 3,000-8,000 stitches.

The mistakes that fail on press are the ones that survive proofing: art approved at the wrong size, colours approved from a monitor instead of a swatch, fine detail approved for a method that cannot hold it. Keep critical elements comfortably inside the print area, let designs that run to an edge extend past it as bleed, and check the proof against the specifications on the main page rather than against how it looks on screen.

  • Final print size set before export — 30 x 40 cm for a full front, 9 x 11 cm for a left chest
  • 300 dpi or higher at that size for raster files; vector for logos and line work
  • CMYK for DTG, with a white underbase expected on dark garments
  • Spot colours chosen from a physical swatch for screen printing
  • No fine detail or gradients in anything destined for vinyl

Further reading