For the best print quality, send a clean, high-resolution file. Crisp, well-prepared artwork ensures sharper details, clearner lines, and a smoother printing process, giving you the best results on your custom t-shirts.
High-quality artwork is key to getting the best print results on your custom t-shirts. Sending a clean, high-resolution file ensures that your design will come out super crisp and clean without any pixelation or blurriness. Low-quality or blurry images can lead to poor prints, so it's important to use the right file format, and correct sizing. Well-prepared artwork helps create a professional, polished look, making your design stand out exactly as you envisioned.
"Good artwork = good print. Bad artwork = bad print. That's it in a nutshell."
Sometimes the terminology can be confusing if you aren't familiar with graphic design. We know sometimes someone who doesn't know design just wants to make a cool shirt. Let's get you up to speed on some terminology so we can better communicate what we might need.
Image Resolution – The level of detail in an image, measured in DPI (dots per inch); higher resolution means sharper, clearer prints, while low resolution can result in blurry or pixelated designs.
Pixels – Small squares of color that make up digital images; more pixels create higher detail, while fewer pixels can make prints appear blocky or blurry. If you think of this in mobile phone terms, low pixels is like taking a picturs on an old flip phone while a high pixel image is like taking that same photo on the latest greatest iPhone. One is old and grainy while the other is super clear.
DPI – Dots per inch (DPI) measures image sharpness; for screen printing and DTG, 300 DPI is ideal to maintain crisp details. Don't be fooled by what you see on the screen! For example, a low dpi image (72 DPI) may look fine on a screen but will appear blurry when printed. A high DPI image (300 DPI) has more detail, making it print crisp and clear.
"If it looks blurry on the screen, it will print blurry. But if it looks good on the screen, it doesn't always mean it will print perfect!"
300 DPI - This image is high resolution and will result in a great print.
72-150 DPI - This image may appear decent, but when zoomed in is low resolution and will result in a below average print.
>72 DPI - This image may appears blurry and will result in a very poor, blurry print.
Did you want to test it out for yourself? Download the bunny images and open them on your computer. Zoom in onto the smile of each one and you will see that the high resolution image still have pretty clear lines, while the 72-150dpi image might look fine at first, but will start to get pixelated as you zoom. The last image will be very obviously blurry, and even more so when zoomed in.
You download these bunny images here.
File Types – Preferred formats include vector files (AI, EPS, PDF) for the sharpest prints, or high-resolution PNGs with transparent backgrounds for digital printing. Other file types include TIFF, PSD, JPG.
Raster Art – Pixel-based images (JPEG, PNG, PSD) that can lose quality when resized; best used at their original dimensions for printing. We recommend artwork that is 300 DPI at print size and which still appears clean and crisp. PNG files are great raster files to use because they have transparent backgrounds, whereas a JPG does not.
Vector Art – Scalable artwork (AI, EPS, PDF) made of mathematical paths, allowing designs to be resized without losing quality for sharp, clean prints. These are the preferred file types to send in for printing.
Print Size – Your design should be set to the exact dimensions you want it printed to ensure accurate scaling and placement on the garment. This is espcially important with raster images because you might send in a high resolution image that is only 1 inch wide but you want the design to be 12 inches wide. So if we were to increase your tiny image to 12 inches wide, the image suddenly becomes very pixelated, which would result in a poor print.
There are a few non-negotiables when submitting your artwork if you want the best print possible. There are some scenarios where we can make exceptions, however, it should be clearly understood that with every sacrifice with artwork, there will be a sacrifice on the print.
Acceptable file types – Preferred vector files: AI, EPS, PDF. Preferred raster files: PSD or PNG.
Art Size & Resolution – All artwork must be sized for print. Raster files must be at 300dpi resolution at print size with no pixelation.
Maximum Print Size – Artwork must not exceed print area for garment. Please review the print areas each garment in the online designs.
Acceptable Content – Artwork must not contain any hateful, illegal, racist images or messages. Images must not violate any intellectual property rights or out team may cancel your order with a refund but without warning.
Outline All Fonts – If fonts are used in an image, they must be converted into images. If the font stays a font type, when we recieve that file, if we don't have the same font files in our computer then the font will not display properly. For photoshop, all fonts will automatically turn into an image, or pixels, when saved as a PND file. To view a video which explains how convert fonts into outlines in Illustrator click here.
We have been in business long enough to know the most common mistakes clients have when submitting artwork. Read below to avoid any back and forth or delays with getting your order started. And keep reading to the next section of common fixes.
Low Resolution – This is by far the most common mistakes. A customer brings in a small image of their friend for example, like a drivers license photo,, and they want to print the picture nice and large on a t shirt. However, the customer may not understand why that won't work, or why the small picture, when resized to be large on a shirt, doesn't keep its clarity.
Remember our really low resolution bunny picture? Let's use her as an example. Look at how nice and cute that image looks below.
At first glance it looks perfect. But the customer might ask to put that image on a shirt about 12" inches tall. That same exact image ends up looking like the pixelated bunny we saw earlier.
A Picture of an Image – Sometimes a client will come in and send us a picture of a picture. So imagine a cutsomer finds a cute bunny picture on a website, and then sends us a picture taken on their phone of their computer screen, a low resolution one at that. That's a double whammy! There is no way for us to be able to grab that same bunny image and use it for print.
A Screen Shot of an Image – Similar to the above example, customers will sometimes send us a screen shot of an image. A screen shot of an image is not the same as the image file itself. Sometimes, a customer may also send us a screenshot of a design created on another website using their designer tool. This is especially difficult when the design elements or fonts used were from the design tool from another website. There is no way of extrapolating those graphics from a screen shot to be used for their design.
Improper Resizing – If, for example, you have a low quality image like our little bunny friend which is 1 inch big and 72dpi. I might tell you that we need the image to be at least 300dpi at print size. So you go into your graphic editing program like photoshop and just resize the image to 10" inches, which is how big you want it printed, and change the resolution from 72dpi to 300dpi. You technically did what we asked, however, simply changing all the settings doesn't always solve the problems. The image will likely look very blurry now. And as we know, blurry images will result in blurry prints. Simply changing the settings will not always fix the problem if the artwork, at its original state, isn't clean enough to be expanded.
Raster Images Inside Vector Files – We prefer when vector files for your artwork. This is because we can resize a vector file and the resolution will not be affected. Vector files use lines, and angles, and math, to be resized without creating pixelation, because the files do not use actual pixels to be created. However, sometimes clients will import a raster image into a vector file. So while the file type is correct, the image inside the vector is still a pixeled image. Therefore, resizing the artwork has the same limitations as resizing a raster image. Sometimes, elements inside a vector file are vector while a separate image is a raster. So when resizing, the vector parts of the images look perfectly fine, while the image is pixelated. Be sure to know the difference!
Understanding Transparency – Transparent in design is important because many designs use white color/ink, however, they are also created on artboards with a white background. This can create issues with designs when the creators of the artwork are not familiar with transparency. Let's take a look at lil' Bunny and see a design and text we made on Photoshop and saved as a PNG file. Remember, PNG files save transparency properties on the file.
Depending how we created and/or saved this design will determine how this image is perceived when applied to websites, other graphic programs, on t shirts etc, due to it's transprent properties. The trasparency cannot be seen on a white background. This is better understood if the background color is something other than white, so let's change the background on this website to green.
Magic! Here is lil' Bunny again but on a green background, similar to if you were to print this design on a green t shirt. This is exactly how we intend the design to look.
What if we took this exact same file and did nothing different, except saved it as a JPEG file. Let's give it a shot...
Since JPEG files do not detect transparency, everything that was transparent in the design was saved as a white color. This explains why there is a white background bounding box around the entire image. Therefore, a submitted design like this would require us to remove the white background. For a simple design like this, it usually isn't a big deal. But if you can imagine a very complex design, it can take quite a bit of time, and therefore added costs to you if we have to remove the background.
Additionally, we don't always know where to remove the white background and what is intended to be white/transparent. For example, what if it was your intention to have the text only be a blue outline without the white inside? Like the image below for example.
Without clear instruction it would be impossible to tell. A miscommunication like this would likely be caught during the art approval stage but for the sake of accuracy, time, and money, it is always in your best interest to understand transparency and submit print-ready artwork.
One last mention in regards to transparency is to be aware of small pockets of white when removing the background on your own. For example, let's say you were given the JPEG image with the white background and you wanted to create a t shirt with it. Being the good customer you are, you decided to clean up the artwork, remove the background, save it as a PNG, and submit the art. You must be careful when removing the white background so that you remove all unwanted parts of the background. For example, if you were not careful, you may forget to remove the white background parts in between the text like in the example below.
As you can see, some parts within the text that were supposed to be removed were not. It may be obvious here, but with a more complicated artwork piece, these spots may be much harder to catch. This is also an issue if we had to do the background removal for you. Remember, print-ready artwork is the best artwork!
Okay, we know now where we can often make a mistake. What's more important is that we know how to fix them.
Start Artwork Creation Right – Low-resolution issues often start at the very beginning. Imagine spending hours creating a masterpiece, only to realize it was designed on a small artboard at 72 DPI. Unfortunately, there’s little that can be done in this situation. As we mentioned earlier, simply changing the DPI and increasing the image size won’t fix the problem.
When working with raster images (any image made of pixels), it's crucial to start with a high-resolution artboard. I recommend setting it to 13" inches wide by 18" inches tall — a size rarely exceeded for apparel decoration. Ensure the DPI is set to 300dpi from the start. This way, anything you create will be high-resolution and suitable for quality printing.
Recreate the Artwork – If the artwork consists of simple text, it can often be corrected in just a few minutes, but that is not always the case. If artwork had to be recreated, the easiest solution is to recreate it from scratch, ensuring accuracy from the start, or use a vector illustration program like Adobe Illustrator.
For more complex designs, if you're unable to replicate them yourself, we may be able to assist. However, if the artwork is highly detailed with many elements, you might need a professional graphic designer to fully recreate it. Keep in mind that intricate designs can be costly to reproduce.
There is no fix – While these are common solutions, sometimes a perfect fix just isn’t possible. If an artwork is highly intricate and low resolution, recreating it perfectly may be impossible. In such cases, the best option is to explore a different design.
Below is an example of a good file. The artwork is a vector file with vector art. It is sized for print (12" inches wide which is the size it will be printed on a shirt). All fonts are outlined.
If you want to download the files to view more closely in your graphic program click here.
