Printing Method for designs with tons of colors, lots of details and shading?
Which printing method would be best if designs have tons of detail and color- with a lot of shading. I would imagine that screenprinting would be to expensive, but i want the same durability.
Also, I recently bought a shirt from Obey, and the image was sort of sticky to touch, was this a transfer? It covered the entire front and was very distressed.
Re: Printing Method for designs with tons of colors, lots of details and shading?
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Which printing method would be best if designs have tons of detail and color- with a lot of shading. I would imagine that screenprinting would be to expensive, but i want the same durability.
Screen printing
Whether it would be too expensive or not would depend on the quantity of t-shirts you produce per design.
For 12 shirts, it probably would be too expensive, for 100 shirts or 1000 shirts, probably not. Also depends on your idea of "too expensive"
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Also, I recently bought a shirt from Obey, and the image was sort of sticky to touch, was this a transfer? It covered the entire front and was very distressed.
Hard to say without seeing the t-shirt. Could have been screen printed directly to the shirt (there are many ways to screen print a design), could have been a vinyl transfer or a plastisol transfer.
Re: Printing Method for designs with tons of colors, lots of details and shading?
Sublimation produces the best image, hand, and durability (you can even bleach the shirts and the color won't come out). It's perfect... as long as you are fine with light shirt colors and Vapor Ts (which rate in quality somewhere above Gildans, yet below the AA brands (American/Alternative)).
DTG can be printed on all colors and cotton. Detail is comparable to sublimation, but in my opinion, sub has more vibrant color. This is the choice if you want a small run of black or fashion Ts though.
Both are going to be more expensive than Screenprint if you are planning on ordering large quantities, but for small print runs or one-offs pricing will actually be cheaper than screen.
Re: Printing Method for designs with tons of colors, lots of details and shading?
Well I'm looking into a designer that does paintings, and i want to be able to take the same detail that he has in his painting an dput them on a shirt. but i want the hand to be very soft. sorta like an edhardy, but less overpriced
Re: Printing Method for designs with tons of colors, lots of details and shading?
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Originally Posted by Ryan_BPC
Well I'm looking into a designer that does paintings, and i want to be able to take the same detail that he has in his painting an dput them on a shirt. but i want the hand to be very soft. sorta like an edhardy, but less overpriced
Most of the t-shirts you see like that (the ed hardys, the afflictions, etc) are all screen printed. The actual screen printing technique may vary from shirt to shirt, but it's usually always screen printing.
Because they are printing 1000's of t-shirts of the same design at a time, they don't really have any issues with "too many colors". Some screen printing presses can handle 14 colors (maybe more?), so it's just a matter of budget and finding the right printer to do the job.
Re: Printing Method for designs with tons of colors, lots of details and shading?
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Originally Posted by Rodney
Because they are printing 1000's of t-shirts of the same design at a time, they don't really have any issues with "too many colors". Some screen printing presses can handle 14 colors (maybe more?), so it's just a matter of budget and finding the right printer to do the job.
Rodney - you are, as usual and of course, correct! There are actually presses out that that can handle up to 22 colors (max I have seen or head about) - usually a press this large is not about how many colors they are going to print, but more about the number of differnt colors they are going to lay down AND the number of specialty inks they are using which often require a flash afterwards AND a cool station - think little kids shirts with tons of color and two or three specialty inks - puff, glitter, crystalina, or gels, many of which can take up to three heads to print (print, flash, cool) before another color or specialty can be added.
Hope this helps to inform!
Dave
__________________ www.spreadingink.com - all over prints, jumbo and full color screen printing
Last edited by Rodney; August 13th, 2008 at 08:23 AM.
Reason: fixed quote marks
This is a discussion about Printing Method for designs with tons of colors, lots of details and shading? that was posted in the General T-Shirt Selling Discussion section of the forums.
Printing Method for designs with tons of colors, lots of details and shading? 
