Written by For t-shirt printing and other promotional garments and merchandise, screen printing is often employed using one of three different methods. ‘Spot Colour’, as known by any t-shirt printer, is widely used and works well with many types of graphics. Spot color printing is used for those graphics that do not have photographic properties.
A graphic design professional typically determines the exact Pantone colours that the ink will be matched to in order to produce a high fidelity image. Pantone coated or noncoated color types are selected to clarify the ink hues of the pattern. Used in publishing, printing and design, the Pantone matching system, is internationally used to identify colors with a unique name and number.
This method of spot colour printing is particularly suited to the printing of branded promotional garments or merchandise where colour identity and uniformity must remain constant throughout a diverse range of products.
“4 Colour Process” is another method of screen printing. Printing in this style is primarily used for images and illustrations that use a wide range of colours, shades and tones. Book and magazine images are also printed by the same 4 colour process.
The transparent inks blend with one another on a plain white backdrop to recreate each of the colours and shades present in the original. This is of course a rather more difficult process to achieve on a fabric than it is on paper. But the method that is utilised is virtually identical. The printing that you choose will work only on white articles of clothing and will not show correctly on coloured items. The print set up costs are higher than that of simple spot colour designs and as such only suitable for larger print runs of 100+.
When garment screen printers reproduce such full colour images onto coloured fabrics a method called ‘Simulated Process’ is used.|The cost for the print set up is going to be a lot higher than that of simple spot colour designs and is only good for the bigger print runs of 100+. When the garment screen printers make full coloured images and put them on coloured fabrics this is called ‘Simulated process’.|When garment screen printers reproduce such full colour images onto coloured fabrics a method called ‘Simulated Process’ is used. The print set-up costs are higher than that of simple spot colour designs and as such only suitable for larger print runs of 100+|This type of printing is only right for use in print runs of one hundred or more. This is because it simply costs more to set it up. A process called “Simulated Process” is used in cases where garment screen printers copy full colour pictures using coloured cloths.|’Simulated Process’ is a method used to reproduce full colour images onto colour fabrics. The costs associated with setting up the print are greater than those of simple spot colour designs. Therefore, they are only useful for larger print runs numbering more than 100.} The artwork is separated into various colours and shades using a method similar to spot colour, as used by a t-shirt printer, to achieve the overall look and feel of the original image.
For transferring heavy metal imagery and fantasy imagery from CD covers to black T-shirts for band merchandise, this popular method is used by printers everywhere. Due to the higher costs when it comes to setup, colour separations and the larger number of colours, this is considered the most expensive form for a t-shirt printer.
