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What's good people? I have what may seem like a very obvious question, but I keep running into problems. when designing for a heat transfer that's 11 x 17, i type those measurements into photoshop. But, when I had the artwork printed up, the design did not fill up the full sheet. So my question is, how do I set the actual file size, and have the artwork match it? So, how would I make the artwork actually 11 x 17? Also, when I measure the artwork on the shirt beforehand,, how do I make sure that I am making the artwork exact for all my designs? I told you...obvious, but complicated. Or, am I over thinking it? Thanks....
Are you tracing a raster/bitmap file?
If, maybe a problem getting the resolution setting correctly into the tracing software.
To see your design 1:1 on your monitor, take care that monitor resolution, image resolution and zoom factor match. Use CTRL+r (on Windows) to display a ruler at the image frame. If the ruler does not measure in inches, click the small icon to the left of x and y in the info panel and choose inches.
If your monitor resolution is 94 dpi and your image resolution is 300 dpi, the zoom factor giving 1:1 display is 100%*94/300 = 31.3%
What's good people? I have what may seem like a very obvious question, but I keep running into problems. when designing for a heat transfer that's 11 x 17, i type those measurements into photoshop. But, when I had the artwork printed up, the design did not fill up the full sheet. So my question is, how do I set the actual file size, and have the artwork match it? So, how would I make the artwork actually 11 x 17? Also, when I measure the artwork on the shirt beforehand,, how do I make sure that I am making the artwork exact for all my designs? I told you...obvious, but complicated. Or, am I over thinking it? Thanks....
The size of your document is like the size of a piece of paper. It's completely unrelated to whatever you decide to draw on that paper. 11 x 17 'paper' means that you have that size film, and you want your art to fit on that film, not actually "be" 11 x 17. If you want your art to actually be that size then you should be able to scale the art itself to 11 x 17, but then, you won't be printing this out to 11 x 17 film, you will now need larger film.
So are you looking for a borderless print? Most of the Kinkos Xerox machines and the likes don't do borderless printing. But a lot of inkjets do, only issue, who haves one you can use? So you might have to buy one like an Epson wide format printer.
Also check your settings in the Print Screen that shrinks the Image to fit the document. Also if you go to a Kinkos type of place make sure they aren't doing that either.
And set the margins up, but like i said most laser printers arent borderless printers so they will only print so far. Trial and Error in this department, or talk with your local printer to see how to remedy this or to find out the settings so you can adjust photoshop accordingly.
I set photoshop up with guides on different templates so I know where to set up the image and how big im allowed to do stretch it.
You said you were heat pressing, so im assuming you are trying to print on a white vinyl paper for a dark/black shirt and dont want a white border?
Last edited by LKent; July 17th, 2009 at 09:57 PM.
Thank you for all of the responses. I really appreciate it. I guess the general question I was asking is if the sheet is 11 x 17, and I want the art work to take up the majority of the sheet, how I would I measure out the artwork in photoshop and illustrator. I know I can make the actual file 11 x 17, but how would i measure out the design? How do you measure the actual artwork in photoshop? Thanks again for all your assistance.
It's actually very easy, but Photoshop has opportunity to decrease the quality of your art by accident. Scaling is one of them. So you're designing on an artboard that is 11 x 17 because that gives you a good idea of how it will work out on a tee. That makes sense. It's important to start the art correctly so you don't have to do anything later that will effect quality. There are several ways to both scale and see the current size of your art. If you have a piece of art on a transparent layer you can Control Click the layer then notice your "info" pallet. It will tell you simply the size of what you have selected. If your art spans several layers, then Control Click the first layer, then Control/Shift Click the other layers involved and Photoshop will simply give you the overall size of all that is selected. Of course, you can also simply drag yout ruler guides, put the zero on one guide and draw another guide on the far side of the art and whatever the ruler says is what you have.
sizing artwork 
