An Introduction to Creating & Manipulating Digital Artwork Print Phase

Each decoration process requires digital artwork to be set up differently. Screen printing & embroidery require the artwork to be more advanced than digital prints like direct-to-garment, sublimation, and wide format. Screen printing requires artwork to be a vector image or a high-resolution, color-separated bitmap image. A bitmap (raster) image is composed of hundreds of small dots (pixels) used to create a design, whereas a vector image uses lines, curves, and points to separate each color within the design. The major difference between vectors and bitmaps is that a vector can be scaled up and down without losing quality, and a bitmap cannot. This is because vectors are created using lines and formulas, and bitmaps are composed of pixels which become distinguishable as they increase in size. To learn more about vector and a bitmap images see our article on the differences between vectors and bitmaps. Below is a breakdown of the artwork requirements for the different decoration processes.

Screen Printing (Direct & Transfers)

Screen Printing requires the artwork to be either a vector (AI, EPS, PDF, or CDR) or a high resolution bitmap image (BMP, PDF, PNG, EPS, JPEG, and PSD). Artwork should be created and edited using either Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, or our website’s design tool. There is no artwork fee if the artwork is a vector or a high resolution bitmap that can easily be manipulated.

The majority of screen print artwork is “spot color,” meaning that each color has its own screen and is printed individually without blending colors. Because each color in the design requires only one color of ink, the print is vibrant & opaque. However, some screen print jobs require “process printing.” Process printing uses CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black) inks to create full-color designs just like an inkjet or laser printer.

We charge between $15 and $30 to vectorize an image depending on its complexity, and we will give you the vector file formats for future use. We do not charge artwork fees for existing vector images, as they are easy to manipulate and set up for printing.

Digital Printing: Direct-to-Garment, Sublimation, & Wide Format

Direct-to-Garment, Sublimation, and Wide Format Printers use CMYK inks to print full color images. The higher the resolution of an image, the higher the overall print quality will be. Since these printers use CMYK ink, the image does not have to be created using design software (like it does for screen printing) and can use most digital file formats. However, bitmap, PDF, PNG, EPS, JPEG, & PSD at a high resolution, or AI, EPS, PDF, & CDR vector images will work best. The reason digital printing is more forgiving for artwork than screen printing is because each color does not need to be separated and the CMYK printheads can easily create any color. While digital printers can print low resolution images, higher resolution images (300+ DPI, or Dots Per Inch) will always print better, as there is more color information within every square inch of the artwork.

Embroidery

Embroidery requires that a design be digitized from a vector format. Digitizing requires special software and sets up the sewing sequence for stitches to create the design. This is a more complex process than editing digital artwork. Embroidery machines must have a digitized design in order to know where and how many stitches to sew into the product. .DST and .EMB are the two most common file types for digitized artwork.

Our online design tool text feature digitizes automatically, and thus is great for creating simple designs. We charge between $15 and $30 to digitize an existing logo (which must already be a vector), and we will give you the digitized file for future use.