T-Shirt Printing – What Is Involved?
There are three particular methods usually employed to accomplish screen printing that produces printed garments for promotions, merchandise and fashion. ‘Spot Color’ t-shirt printing is the method most often used for a large variety of graphics. It is also the best suited method for such a task. Spot colour printing is the most suitable method used for the printing of graphics that are not photographic in nature.
A graphic designer usually chooses the ink colours used to reproduce the graphic images, and they are all Pantone specified. Pantone coated or uncoated colour references are chosen to specify the ink colours of the design. Used in publishing, printing and design whereby each colour is identified by a unique pantone name and number, the Pantone matching system is an international colour reference.
When colour identity and uniformity is an issue, for example in branded promotional garments or a large selection of products, this method of spot color printing works very well.
4 Color Process is an additional technique for screen printing. This is the best way to print photographs and illustrations which contain broad colour ranges, tones, and graduations. The method used to print images found in magazines and books is the 4 colour process as well.
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 rather more difficult process to achieve on a fabric than it is on paper. However the method employed is essentially the same. This particular sort of printing will, obviously, only be effective on white cloth. It won’t work on coloured garments. ‘Simulated Process’ is a method used to reproduce full colour images onto colour fabrics. The costs associated with setting up the print are greater than those of simple spot colour designs. Therefore, they are only useful for larger print runs numbering more than 100. Using method similar to spot colour t-shirt printing to achieve the overall look and feel of the original image the artwork is separated into various colours and shades
This is a standard method used by all printers and most popular for example with the reproduction of heavy metal and fantasy imagery taken from CD cover artwork and reproduced onto black t-shirts for band merchandise. 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 t-shirt printing.
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