Just What Does T-Shirt Printing Entail?

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

The colours of the inks to be used in the reproduction of the graphic images are usually Pantone specified colours chosen by a graphic designer. Pantone coated or uncoated colour references are chosen to specify the ink colours of the design. The Pantone system is a global standard for colour matching where every colour is assigned a unique designation.

Spot colour printing is well suited to printing branded promotional garments or items in which colour identity and uniformity needs to stay the same throughout a varying range of items.

An additional method of screen 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. All magazines and books use this four-color printing process as well.

The transparent inks blend with one another on a plain white backdrop to recreate each of the colours and shades present in the original. It is much harder to do the same on cloth rather than than paper. The methods are pretty similar. This type of printing will of course only work on white garments and will not be suitable for coloured fabrics. The print set up costs are higher than that of simple spot colour designs and as such only suitable for larger print runs of 100+

When garment screen printers reproduce such full colour images onto coloured fabrics a method called ‘Simulated Process’ is used. The artwork is separated into various colours and shades using a method similar to spot colour t-shirt printing to achieve the overall look and feel of the original image.

Most t-shirt printers use this method, and it is especially popular when used to copy fantasy and heavy metal album artwork onto shirts to be sold by the band. This type of t-shirt printing is the most expensive. For that reason, it is used entirely on large print runs. This is because it costs more to set up the colour separations, and it takes a greater number of colours to print the pictures.

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