An Explanation on Basic File Formats for T-Shirt Printing Everybody loves the simplicity of T-shirts. These garments are comfortable, appealing, and capable of having a unique personality through a spectacular design. For companies, T-shirts make the perfect marketing collateral at an event and the ideal uniform for certain occasions in the office.
The problem, however, is that many business owners do not know the right file types when it comes to bulk T-shirt printing. With that said, it is important to be familiar with these formats so that the quality of T-shirt prints will be at its finest. Here is a quick guide on the file types:
The RGB File Types All designers know that when it comes to printing, RGB is not the format to go with. So clients of wholesale shirt stores should avoid sending these two file types as the sole basis of printing.
JPEG, or Joint Photographic Experts Group, is one of these file types. As a raster file, JPEGs work best with web-based designs. The compression of the image in this format makes it load quickly in browsers.Nonetheless,this loses some quality when enlarged and when the pixel density is low, which makes it bad for T-shirt printing.
Another format to avoid for T-shirts is PNG or Portable Network Graphics. While this has better quality than GIF files, PNGs are still raster, web-based files, which means they’re best used in digital formats and not printed material.
The File Types
CMYK is the ideal colour mode for print. There are three main formats that designers use for Tshirts. The PDF or portable document format is the first type common among shirt designers. Developed by Adobe Systems, PDFs are a universal format. Another benefit from this file type is that it remains editable, which is ideal for last-minute and pre-printing colour corrections. TIFFs (Tagged Image File Format) are also quite popular. Most programs support this file type due to its higher quality image compared to PNG or JPG. While TIFF is a raster format, the quality of the image makes up for the deficiencies of the two types in the RGB section. Lastly, the most common logo format of all: the EPS or Encapsulated PostScript file. With its high quality and resizability (without compromising image definition), designers like this file format.
The Editable File Types There are more generic file types that remain editable so that designers and clients can tweak a few details before the design hits the printer.
Common formats of this include Adobe Photoshop’s PSD and Adobe Illustrator’s AI, both of which are uncompressed working files that record every tweak that has been done on the file. Another quite common file type is CorelDRAW’s CSD, although most designers would want this published as an EPS or AI instead. For higher quality T-shirt prints, familiarity with file formats is necessary. Through this knowhow, no T-shirt design will appear below par.
Resources:http://www.firelabel.co.uk/ http://99designs.com/designer-blog/2011/05/18/file-types-logo-design/ http://www.creativebloq.com/design/guide-t-shirt-printing-designers-912867