Just What Does T-Shirt Printing Entail?

For the production of printed garments for promotions, merchandise and fashion there are mainly 3 particular methods of screen printing employed. ‘Spot Colour’ printing is widely used and works well with many types of graphics. Spot colour printing is the most suitable method used for the printing of graphics that are not photographic in nature.

A graphic design professional typically determines the exact Pantone colours that the ink will be matched to in order to produce a high fidelity image. In order to isolate the hues of the ink in the image, Pantone coated or noncoated references are selected. The Pantone system is a global standard for colour matching where every colour is assigned a unique designation.

Branded promotional garments, or other merchandise where color identify and uniformity must stay constant, are particularly well suited for spot color printing.

Another method of t-shirt printing used is called ‘4 Colour Process’. This is the best way to print photographs and illustrations which contain broad colour ranges, tones, and graduations. The images found in many books and magazines and printed by the 4 colour process.

The inks, though they are translucent, will merge together on the white background, which will reproduce the tones and hues of the original. This is certainly a much harder procedure to do on material than it is to do on paper. However the method employed is essentially the same.

This t-shirt printing method only works well on white garments and is unsuitable for coloured fabrics.

This type of printing is only right for use in print runs of one hundred or more. This is because it simply costs more to set it up. A process called “Simulated Process” is used in cases where t-shirt printers copy full colour pictures using coloured cloths. The artwork is divided into different hues and tones utilising a process that resembles spot colour printing in order to obtain the overall appearance and style of the original picture.

This method is used by every printer and is very popular for reproducing heavy metal and fantasy images taken from CD artwork and reproduced on black t-shirts for band merchandising. Due to the higher set up prices which includes the separating of the colour as well as an increased amount of colours used to print the pictures, this works out to be the most expensive way of printing.

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