Preparing Your Artwork For Dtg Printing – Blends and Transparencies

You've chosen the best organic and sustainable garments around, the most efficient and sustainable print process available but you're not done yet. A great product is not complete without a great print.

Here's how to ensure you make the most of your artwork to get the best DTG possible.

We print all of your POD (Print on Demand) or Drop Shipping orders with DTG printing. Its a method where your artwork file is read by a RIP (Raster Image Processor) and a set of instructions is sent to the printer, including how much of each colour to print and where to print it.

Your image is made up of tens of thousands of pixels and each one carries colour and transparency information. Our Kornit printers will want to do something with that information even if you don't think they are important or even visible pixels. If you are printing onto any coloured t-shirts, to produce a bold and opaque print, our printers put a base layer of white down, much like how we screen print with waterbased inks. If there is any pixel information that isn't pure black (#000000) there will be a base white layer (often two layers) printed underneath. So why is that a potential problem?

Consider the following image:

The image fades into white. That will work well on a white or off-white garment, but what will happen on a dark coloured garment?

Our Kornit printers will put a white base under all of the pixel information. All areas of the image even the ones which are either white or very transparent will have a white based printed underneath. See below:

So when you are aiming for a printed garment that looks like this:

You will actually end up with a print that looks like this:

To give yourself an easier time its worth avoiding blends, fades and transparencies in your artwork for DTG printing. However, that's not to say they can't be achieved. We can manipulate the artwork file for you and create the white base printing information for the printer to follow. This takes some time and we do need to charge for this service but once you have sold a few garments you will quickly make that cost back.

Get in touch with us if you would like us to create a custom white base for your DTG artwork.