T-Shirt Printing Settings for Illustrator
Screenprinted T-shirts make popular promotional materials, event giveaways and personal statements. However, they require careful art setup to ensure a good result. Screenprinters must print each color on a separate screen, and all colors require precise alignment to prevent gaps in the artwork. Setting up screenprinting artwork by hand was difficult and time consuming. Modern screenprinters use programs such as Adobe Illustrator to ensure their prints come out looking great.
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Screens as Layers
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Adobe Illustrator's built-in layers function makes it easy to separate each color out for later printing. Decide on a printing method before setting up the layers. Printers using the "trap" method will need to ensure that each screen slightly overlaps the others. Printers using the "knockout" method will need to make sure no color overlaps another one, to prevent one ink from showing through another. If you're using the "overprint" technique, smaller elements can print on top of larger ones, but you risk ink color changes. Set up each layer as its own spot color unless using CMYK printing. Remove all extra RGB layers before outputting the layers.
White Base
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Some printers add a white base under all print jobs, to ensure the shirt doesn't show through the ink. This base is made up of a combination of all the artwork in one layer. Other printers use a white base only on dark shirts or only under four color process shirts. The spot color inks used in normal T-shirt printing are largely opaque, making a white base optional. However, four-color process inks are translucent, and require a white layer unless printed on a white shirt.
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Halftones
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Screenprinters create diluted versions of a color using halftones, a set of printed dots that blend to look like a shade. Larger dots close together look darker, while smaller dots farther apart look lighter. These patterns can interact in unattractive ways when printed on top of one another, however. Mismatched halftones create ugly grid patterns that can cause serious problems with four color photo prints and other detailed artwork. Avoid printing halftones over one another. When printing four color process halftones, always set the cyan separation to 75 degrees, the magenta separation to 15 degrees, the yellow separation to 105 degrees and the black separation to 45 degrees. Print halftones at no more than 64 lines per inch. The coarse weave of most T-shirts causes finer halftones to blur and smear.
Output
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In the "Print" menu, set the media size to the same as your transparent output media. Choose the "Marks and Bleed" option from the menu on the left side of the screen and select "All Printer's Marks." This automatically puts registration marks on the output and labels each separation with its color. Registration marks are particularly important for printers using the knockout method, as they have much less adjustment room on the press. Under the Output menu, change the output mode to separations, and check to ensure that the Document Ink Options dialogue shows printer icons only next to the spot colors or CMYK separations required for the job. Print the file to PDF or to a large-format printer capable of handling clear media.
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References
- Photo Credit Photos.com/PhotoObjects.net/Getty Images
