How Is The Process Done For T-Shirt Printing?
For merchandise and fashion there are mainly 3 particular methods of screen printing employed. In t-shirt printing, ‘Spot Colour’ printing is the most common and works exceptionally well for a great variety of graphics. Spot color printing is the appropriate procedure for graphic prints that aren’t photographic.
The colored ink that is used in reproducing graphic images are chosen by a graphic designer and more often than not are Pantone specified colors. In order to isolate the hues of the ink in the image, Pantone coated or noncoated references are selected. 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.
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 Color Process is an additional technique for t-shirt printing. This method of printing is used mainly for photographic images and illustrations that consist of a wide range of colours, tones and graduations. 4 colour process is also the same method of printing by which all images in books and magazines are printed.
These inks allow light to flow through and then merge together on white backgrounds to make all the hues and tones of the orginal one. This is rather more difficult process to achieve on a fabric than it is on paper. But the method used is about the same.
This t-shirt printing method only works well on white garments and is unsuitable for coloured fabrics.
The cost for the print set up is going to be a lot higher than that of simple spot colour designs and is only good for the bigger print runs of 100+. When the t-shirt printers make full coloured images and put them on coloured fabrics this is called ‘Simulated process’. 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.
For transferring heavy metal imagery and fantasy imagery from CD covers to black T-shirts for band merchandise, this popular method is used by printers everywhere. This type of printing is the most expensive. For that reason, it is used entirely on large print runs. This is because it costs more to set up the colour separations, and it takes a greater number of colours to print the pictures.