guys
I have my own designs on paper. scanned some. understood that I should have everyhtin on vector files. got photoshop. cannot figure it out...
the question is:
I have a full time job, a baby.....I am starting my onw brand. my goal is not to become a t shirt fullfillement shop, but to develop a brand.
should i spend time learning photoshop and vector....(I am sure it could not hurt i got that....) or shoudl i spend time on selling and finding an independant artist to digitalized and maybe create some art....
what do you pro think???
Tom photoshop has some vector abilities yet isnt a true vector program. You'll need Illustrator or CorelDRAW to convert to vector. There are some free vector progs out there and a forum search will get you thir info.
As far as learnign the software or sticking to selling thats up to you. If you can afford to have someone else do your art and can spend good time selling you can make a lot of money. I have many clients that work with me this way. The down side is your loosing money on the art end.
Maybe at fist you can contract out your art so you can get a good client base and learn the software on the side until your readyt o take the plunge and do it all yourself.
I got Inkscape and tried to play with it last week but not sure it worked.
i basically was able to save what i had on pdf into this format .....that s it...does it mean that i can take that to my local shop and they can use it???
If the resolution of the art is at least 200 dpi at print size raster images should not be a problem with expoerenced printers/companies.
If you created the art in Photoshop keep it as a psd file and do not flaten the art. If going on dark shirts the printer will need to put the art on a black background and white background to separate properly.
They should be able to accept a pdf as well. PDf,s can be opened in photoshop, Illy and CorelDRAW. Just make sure the scan used a high resolution so when they resize the art to print size it will still fall in the 200-300 dpi range.
With Inkscape, you'll see that you can import a bitmap (something with pixels, also called a "raster" file, such as what you scanned), and then "trace" this, to make a vector image. Play around with trace a bit, which is under the menu Path>Trace Bitmap...
You can get everything to look like you want it to, including changing the shape around by editing nodes (once you double click on a selected vector shape, you can move the nodes around, and change their handles).
Learning Photoshop or Illustrator (or similar apps) proficiently will take you a LOT of time. Years, some will say. Neither are terribly 'jump and go' programs; they are huge and feature rich. Spend your time with what you know: illustration. Hand off your artwork to a company to make your separations for you.
newbie, desings on paper, how to do..... 
