EC99SS

*edit* - added an example pic

Hi all-

I have a question regarding the use of brushes and the design for screenprinting. I believe it's an easy one for the seasoned folks here, however may take me a little to describe it as I'm learning it. Recently I've take great interest in learning photoshop (find it fun). I've come up with some cool designs in theory that I would love to put on a shirt (however realize that I don't know how to save it for printing purposes). And I know Illustrator and CorelDraw is more suited (however one step at a time for me...haha)

At any rate, I installed some grunge brushes and tribal brushes and came up with a simple yet cool background. We have our logo and company name in a vector format. My question is, what would be the best way to set it up so it can be used for screenprinting purposes. Here is what I've done so far on the design Total of 4 colors:

1) Background (layer 0) has been set to transparent.
2) Layer 2 - Smoke shadows (brush) - Light Grey
3) Layer 3 - Paint streaks (brush) - Darker Grey
4) Layer 4 - Tribal design (Brush) - Darkest Grey
5) Layer 5 - Vectored Logo and company name - Red

Utilizing all the color combinations and opacity changes I got it to the point where we love the background and the logo just pops. My question is...what else do I need to do to package it up to send to a printer? Do I need to combine layers prior (or leave as is)?

Oh and I used a great shirt template to see how it looks. I played with the design above and positioned/resized/scewed it perfectly to how we would like it placed. With that I saved that particular file as a .jpg so the printer can see the placement. Thanks much for your time and sorry for the long winded post. Best Regards all! EC

Here is a sample pic (in theory) of what I created...simple background with logo overlay

 

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AdvancedArtist

Quote: Originally Posted by EC99SS Hi all- I have a question regarding the use of brushes and the design for screenprinting. I believe it's an easy one for the seasoned folks here, however may take me a little to describe it as I'm learning it. Recently I've take great interest in learning photoshop (find it fun). I've come up with some cool designs in theory that I would love to put on a shirt (however realize that I don't know how to save it for printing purposes). And I know Illustrator and CorelDraw is more suited (however one step at a time for me...haha) At any rate, I installed some grunge brushes and tribal brushes and came up with a simple yet cool background. We have our logo and company name in a vector format. My question is, what would be the best way to set it up so it can be used for screenprinting purposes. Here is what I've done so far on the design Total of 4 colors: 1) Background (layer 0) has been set to transparent. 2) Layer 2 - Smoke shadows (brush) - Light Grey 3) Layer 3 - Paint streaks (brush) - Darker Grey 4) Layer 4 - Tribal design (Brush) - Darkest Grey 5) Layer 5 - Vectored Logo and company name - Red Utilizing all the color combinations and opacity changes I got it to the point where we love the background and the logo just pops. My question is...what else do I need to do to package it up to send to a printer? Do I need to combine layers prior (or leave as is)? Oh and I used a great shirt template to see how it looks. I played with the design above and positioned/resized/scewed it perfectly to how we would like it placed. With that I saved that particular file as a .jpg so the printer can see the placement. Thanks much for your time and sorry for the long winded post. Best Regards all! EC

I would recamend saving the graphic to size at 300 DPI and leave the layers intact incase your printer needs to make some adjustments to the layers to prep the art for screen printing. If you used any fonts I would send those along to your printer also in case he does not have the fonts you used.

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EC99SS

Tom -
Thank you for your reply. It's truly appreciated. I will keep all the layers as is.

OK now the newbie in me again...
I already saved it as a .psd but didn't adjust any dpi yet. Am I screwed?

Also I changed the image size from 73 to 300 and the file went from 2.25M to 31M. Is that normal?

Thanks again!

 

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myk5

Quote: Originally Posted by EC99SS Tom - Thank you for your reply. It's truly appreciated. I will keep all the layers as is. OK now the newbie in me again... I already saved it as a .psd but didn't adjust any dpi yet. Am I screwed? Also I changed the image size from 73 to 300 and the file went from 2.25M to 31M. Is that normal? Thanks again!

OUCH!!!!

Yes, it normal for the file size to grow - the more pixels per inch the more data there is to store for the image if the dimensions stay the same.

I say 'ouch' because you should NEVER work on new design at such a low resolution. 72 pixels per inch is raster monitor resolution, it's a previewing standard for the web. It's NOT an appropriate resolution for original artwork.

Really, you should create the image larger and with more resolution than you need. Why? Because you decrease image quality when you upscale the image, when you add resolution to it. You can always make the image smaller and look good, but you cannot go in the other direction, you can't replace information that isn't there to begin with.

As your image has no color, you can get the file size smaller by changing the color mode to grayscale.

I really hope the artwork is acceptable still, after adding all those pixels and the resulting radical antialiasing.

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EC99SS

Myk5 -
Thanks for the input (I just learned something new!). I have no problem recreating it. (it was fun to do). Fortunately the logo and company name are already vector. I'm sure this design will take a seasoned person all but 5-10 minutes to do (me...probably an hour as I'm learning and picky...haha).

Thanks again!

 

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