hey i'm reaily new here and i was wondering how easy it would be to get my designs printed. what i mean is would it be possible to find a local screenprinter via yellowbook, send them my designs and have my shirts made? or is it more complicated? what are blanks? screen printing is just basically printing on a t-shirt like a piece of paper right?
would it be possible to find a local screenprinter via yellowbook, send them my designs and have my shirts made?
Yes, but..
Quote:
Originally Posted by stoked365
or is it more complicated?
It is more complicated. Your artwork has to be good quality, and by good quality I mean either a high resolution raster file (such as a JPG) or a vector file.
There are many variables you have to take into consideration. The size and location of the print, the colour of the shirt, the number of colours in the image, the number of shirts you need printed - all of these things will affect the price significantly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stoked365
what are blanks?
Blanks t-shirts with no graphics printed on them. You can buy them from the screenprinter.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stoked365
screen printing is just basically printing on a t-shirt like a piece of paper right?
Nope, it's quite a bit more involved than that. Check out this thread, which has some links to some tutorials that should give you the basic understanding of the process:
thanks for the post
after checking out that thread it looks like i'll have to take my stuff to a screenprinter to get it printed.
do you think you could estimate how much a design taking up a third of the shirt in 4 colors would run me for a smaller quantity, like 200 shirts?
is there special software to convert designs in like photoshop or have scanned into raster/vector files? could screenprinters do it for me if i gave them a hi-res copy of a design?
Let your printer do the vectorizing with a high res file you send them. We often have clients think they can do it w/ a press of the button on illustrator only to find it needs further cleaning up. Just trust the professionals to do the work they are trained at. You can check the phone book, the internet or go to an artsy DIY shop and ask the owner who they would recommend in town.
Price wise, we can not tell you a price on this forum because all printers are different. It will depend on how much the region you are in allows printers to charge, what kind of shirt is going to be ordered by your printer, weather it will be plastisol, water based, discharge printing. weather your design is 4 color process printing or spot color and how experience the printer is , are they new, desperate for work and charging cheap prices for o.k work or more experienced and charging more for dynamic results.
Just start calling folks in the yellow pages, ask for their email so you can send them the art and they will know from there what it will cost for printing, the shirts will be decided on between you and the printer and that will be an additional fee.
is there special software to convert designs in like photoshop or have scanned into raster/vector files? could screenprinters do it for me if i gave them a hi-res copy of a design?
Is your artwork on paper or on the computer? If it is on paper they can most likely make a high-res scan of it and work from that. If it is a computer file they will have to look at it and tell you.
There are programs that automatically trace raster files into vector files (CorelDraw and Adobe Illustrator), but this works best with simple, bold art with no gradients (fades between two colours). Results are varied and usually need a lot of tweaking to come out right. Also, that software is pretty pricey if that is all you are going to be using it for.
I'd just send the file to the printers and see what they can do.
getting my designs printed 
Your artwork has to be good quality, and by good quality I mean either a high resolution raster file (such as a JPG) or a vector file.
