Color Items!

Hi, I’m gonna use this post to explain alot of stuff about the process of DTG printing on non-white clothing with color.

For as long as it makes sense to, whenever a new color item comes out in the shop there will be 3 images available minimum.

• Pic 1 ( Printful Generated Mock Up Image)

• Pic 2 Close Up ( Printful Generated Mock Up Image)

• A well lit photo of the sample taken using my phone

Black and white stencil items will generally pass with just the mock up for now. Their designs are simple enough that a real photo and a mock up look very similar so there isn’t much need for a third image.

When you design with Printful they provide you with this nifty little color sample chart that you order in the form of a shirt with RGB values indicating the hue to the right of them.

Both of these color charts were printed onto the Bella + Canvas 3001 T shirts.You will need to zoom in to examine the following images closely.

 

As you can see printing on White vs Black makes a drastic difference in the saturation of color as well as the thickness of the ink as well. The reason for this is that when printing on Black (or anything but white garments) Printful adds a base layer of white before adding color on top. White is the easiest thing to color on, with everything else you are taking on some sort of absorbtion. Printing on top of a white layer first helps for the color to maintain the integrity of it’s hue.

Once I figured out what the heck I was looking at, I made marks on the chart to choose the colors that I will add to my entire design pallette.

This is what that pallette looks like digitally on Illustrator.

 

This was the old version of my pallette, I later updated it with 3 colors.

Close up you can really see how it binds differently to the black fabric. Absolutely something you should wash inside out to preserve the shirt for as long as possible.

 

Basically, know that when you buy a print on colored fabric the ink will be more dense, kinda cakey in a way, and prone to cracks after a long period of time. When printing on white the ink is able to combine with the fabric better rather than just sit on top.

So yeah, Printful will do for the time being. So that means that it is my duty to provide the most accurate information that I can on their products appearance and quality, as well as be accurate calibrating Illustrator on my computer to Printful’s printing system. If things go wrong we want it to be Printful’s fault exponentially more often than you or me. Please take a look at my Return Policy for a brief explanation on the topic.

 

Thank you for reading!

 

- garth