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I've never had anything screenprinted before, so I need some input on this. My friend does the designs mainly in illustrator , however i think he does use photoshop at times.
I want to do a few simple silk-screens that are 1-2 color, but I may also want to do more complicated prints involving multicolor, or photograph prints. I'm just wondering in terms of high quality printing, what is the industry standard in terms of the format for the file to be in?
The best thing to do is to ask the specific printer.
As long as the graphic is high resolution (in the case of a raster graphic), or sent as a scalable vector graphic (eps, illustrator, etc), then the exact format usually doesn't matter.
I've sent BMPs (my first ever print job), high res JPGs, GIFs, PNGs, Adobe Illutrator ai files, Photoshop PSD files, CorelDraw CDR files, PDF files.
Some screen printers have a preference, some can handle them all.
if he uses illustrator and saves as legacy eps (usually V8 is back far enough) - converts text to outlines it can be used by most any printer - same with corel to save it as eps with text converted to curves. Photoshop is different - unless he uses chanels and specifies spot colors (or it is a one color design) you will need someone who knows what they are doing to seperate it correctly.
As Rodney said - if you work with a printer ask them what format they prefer.