How Is The Process Done For T-Shirt Printing?
For t-shirt printing and other promotional garments and merchandise, screen printing is often employed using one of three different methods. ‘Spot Colour’ printing is widely used and works well with many types of graphics. Spot color printing is the appropriate procedure for graphic prints that aren’t photographic.
A graphic design professional typically determines the exact Pantone colours that the ink will be matched to in order to produce a high fidelity image. In order to isolate the hues of the ink in the image, Pantone coated or noncoated references are selected. An international colour reference used in publishing, printing and design whereby each colour is identified by a unique Pantone name and number and is called the Pantone matching system.
This method of spot colour printing is particularly suited to the printing of branded promotional garments or merchandise where colour identity and uniformity must remain constant throughout a diverse range of products.
“4 Colour Process” is another method of t-shirt screen printing. 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 a lot harder to process on fabric than it is on paper. But the method used is about the same. The t shirt printing that you choose will work only on white articles of clothing and will not show correctly on coloured items. 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 printing to achieve the overall look and feel of the original image.
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 printing.