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T Shirt Printing Tips & Tricks

Here are some tips to help you create your own designs for a quality t shirt print.

Software

We recommend the following software for both professional and beginner designers:

  • Inkscape is a free vector graphics program that has similar functions as Adobe Illustrator and CorelDraw. Vector images can be resized to large or small sizes without losing image quality, and converted to the required picture formats (PNG and JPG).
  • GIMP is a free graphics program that allows you to edit photos and images. It has similar functions as Adobe Photoshop and Paint. You can save files in a variety of bitmap formats including JPG and PNG.
  • Microsoft Picture Editor can be used to quickly convert your image files into other formats including JPG and PNG.

File formats

  • Uploaded files should be in JPG or PNG file formats. You can create transparent backgrounds in PNG format.
  • Your images should be saved in a high resolution.
  • When you upload an image, the online designer will automatically scale it as large as possible without losing picture quality.
  • Within the online designer:
    • You can scale your images down it down to suit your purposes.
    • If you scale the image up, you will notice the quality meter turn from green to amber.
    • If you go into the red, a warning notice appear. This indicates that the uploaded image cannot be printed or embroidered at the size you require. You will either need to provide a higher resolution image or reduce the size of your design.
    • If you add a product to the cart containing an oversized image, you will be warned that this will result in a poor quality product.

Transparent backgrounds

It can be quite easy to create images with transparent background:

  • You can create pictures with transparent backgrounds in PNG format.
  • We recommend a graphics program called GIMP, which allows you to easily replace selected colours with a transparent colour (represented as a grey checkered background) and save the file in PNG format.
  • In GIMP, press Control + L to bring up the Layers dialogue box. Right click in the background of the Layers dialogue box and select "Add alpha layer". Now, whenever you cut a selection from your image, it will be replaced with the transparent pattern. Ensure you save as PNG file format (JPG format does not support transparent colours).
  • If you upload a valid PNG file, transparent pixels will not be printed onto your t shirts.