How to Customize Zip-Up Hoodies

Zip-up hoodies make wonderful corporate gifts and birthday presents. It can be difficult to find exactly the right zip-up hoodie, one that has the design or message you want to display on it. Fortunately, you can use the Adobe Photoshop software to create a custom zip-up hoodie right on your home computer. Creating a custom hoodie allows you to personalize the hoodie to suit whatever holiday or celebration comes up.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Home momputer Adobe Photoshop CafePress

1. 
   Download the Adobe Photoshop program.

   Load the Adobe Photoshop software onto your computer. You can purchase Photoshop at a software or office supply store and install it onto your computer easily. Another option is to download a free trial version of Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 at the Adobe Software website (see References below). The trial version offers all of the tools you need to design a customized zip-up hoodie.

2. 
   Open a new image file.

   Start a new file for your customized design by clicking on the "File" tab at the top, left-hand side of the screen, then clicking on "New" from the list that appears. A screen will appear with blanks to fill in the dimensions of the image. For a zip-up hoodie, fill in 2,000 pixels for both the height and width and 300 DPI for the image resolution, then click "OK." The image will now be ready to customize.

3. 
   Add text to your design

   Create your message on the zip-up hoodie. Click on the "Text" tool, located in the toolbox. The toolbox is a vertical box that contains all of the Photoshop tools you can use to customize the look of your design. The "Text" tool looks like a capital letter "T." Once you select it, you can drag a box onto your image and type inside it. To change the look of the text, you can click on the adjustment tools at the top of the screen.

4. 
   Save the image to a file.

   Save a copy of your image to a file on your home computer. To do this, click on the "File" button at the top of the screen, then click on the words "Save As." When a screen pops up, name the file whatever you like and save it in JPEG format. There will be a list of formats available, but JPEG is the file type that is necessary to upload your image to a print-on-demand web company. When you are finished, click "OK."

5. 

   Place the newly designed image onto a print-on-demand website such as CafePress (see References below). On the main page of the CafePress website, click on the link entitled "Create Custom T-shirts & More." Once the page loads, select the items that you would like to place the image onto, such as a zip-up hoodie. Once you click on the item, you can use the image uploader to load your image onto the CafePress website, and order the quantity of zip-up hoodies that you would like to receive.

References

• CafePress
• Adobe Photoshop