Printing
DTG printing: what prints well and what does not
Every mistake on this page looks correct on a screen. That is why they get printed. Six things the process does to a design, what each one looks like when it arrives, and what to change before you upload.
How it works
Ink into fabric, not onto paper
Direct to garment printing sprays water-based ink straight into the cotton. There is no setup per design, which is what makes print on demand possible at all: one shirt costs the same to make as the hundredth. The trade is that the fabric is part of the result. Ink sinks into fibres rather than sitting on a surface, so everything prints slightly softer than it looks on a backlit screen, and on a dark garment the printer has to lay white ink down first before any color will show at all.
Almost every surprise below comes from one of those two facts.
Six surprises
What goes wrong, and why
Symptom, cause, and the change that fixes it.
Soft shadows and feathered edges
What you see
A dull grey box or halo around the design on dark garments.
Why
DTG lays a white underbase beneath anything that is not fully transparent, so it can print color on top of a dark shirt. A pixel at 20% opacity still asks for underbase, and underbase is opaque white ink. On a screen that pixel is a soft edge. On a black shirt it is a smear.
Fix
Flatten soft edges before export. Zoom to the edge of your artwork at 100% and look for partial transparency rather than trusting how it looks at fit-to-screen.
Light artwork on a light garment
What you see
The design almost disappears on Bone, White or Banana.
Why
There is no ink contrast to carry it. White ink on a white shirt is barely visible, and pale artwork behaves the same way. It is not a printing fault, it is physics.
Fix
Check every design against the lightest color you enable, not against your canvas. If it fails, either add a dark outline or do not enable the pale shades for that design.
Dark artwork on a dark garment
What you see
The design reads as a texture rather than an image.
Why
The same problem in the other direction. Navy artwork on a navy shirt has nothing to separate it from the fabric, and the underbase does not help because the artwork itself is dark.
Fix
Test the extremes of your range. A design that works on both Black and White will work on everything between.
Fine lines and small text
What you see
Lines break up, small text fills in and becomes unreadable.
Why
Ink spreads slightly into cotton fibres, which is fine on a bold shape and fatal on a hairline. Fabric is not paper and it does not hold a one-pixel line.
Fix
Keep strokes chunky and text large. If a line looks thin at print size on your screen, it will be thinner on fabric.
Gradients and photographs
What you see
Banding, or a washed-out result that looks nothing like the file.
Why
DTG has a narrower range than a screen. Smooth gradients get approximated, and the subtle tonal differences a photograph depends on are the first thing lost.
Fix
Favour flat color and hard edges. If you need a gradient, make it a long one between two strong colors rather than a subtle shift.
Upscaling a small file
What you see
Soft, mushy print that was sharp on screen.
Why
Enlarging adds pixels, not detail. Blur invisible on a 1000px file on a monitor is very visible printed fifteen inches wide.
Fix
Start at print size. A standard t-shirt front is 4500 by 5400 pixels, which is 15 by 18 inches at 300 DPI.
The check most people skip
Look at your design on every color you sell
Three of the six problems above are contrast problems, and all three are invisible until you put the design on the actual shade. A design checked only against a white canvas has not been checked against Bone, or Banana, or Navy, which are the shades where it quietly fails.
Rendering it on the full range takes the guesswork out, and it is the same set of images the listing needs anyway.
FAQ
DTG questions
- What is DTG printing?
- Direct to garment. The printer sprays water-based ink straight onto the fabric, like an inkjet printer onto cotton. It is what most print on demand t-shirts are made with, because it needs no setup per design and so costs the same for one shirt as for a hundred.
- Why does my design look faded on the shirt?
- Usually contrast rather than a printing fault. Ink sits in cotton fibres rather than on top of them, so everything prints slightly softer than it looks backlit on a screen. Pale artwork on a pale garment loses the most.
- Why is there a grey box around my design?
- Semi-transparent pixels. DTG prints a white underbase under anything that is not fully transparent so the colors show on a dark garment, and partial transparency asks for partial underbase. Soft shadows and feathered edges are the usual culprits.
- Does DTG print white ink?
- Yes, and on dark garments it is doing most of the work. It is laid down first as an underbase, then the color goes on top. That is why transparency in your file matters so much more on dark shirts than on white ones.
- Will my design look the same on every size?
- No. The print scales with the garment, so the same file sits proportionally larger on a small than on a 3XL. Design to look right in the middle of your size range rather than at one end.
- How do I check a design before selling it?
- Order one. A sample on the actual blank from the actual print provider tells you more than any preview, and it is far cheaper than finding out through returns. After that, render the design on every color you enable and look at the extremes.
See it on every shade before a buyer does. See pricing