Discuss the various t-shirt fulfillment services in this general fulfillment forum. Newer companies like RedBubble, etc can be discussed in this main forum.
Companies that have been around 2+ years (CafePress.com, Zazzle.com, Spreadshirt.com, PrintMojo.com, PrintFection, etc), may have their own separate subforums below (as demand permits).
I'm new to this board, and I've been browsing for some time now. From the very beginning, it shocked me that the main fulfillment services had such a serious restriction when it comes to colors.
I.E: Spreadshirt limits the coloring to 3 colors for vectorized images, or you can use pixel based images, but you only can print over white t-shirts.
Some of them also leave the white parts as transparent, which also screws with certain designs.
My project is a little more complicated than that, I use 5-10 colors per design. However,I won't be able to print them through those companies due to their restrictions.
How do you people overcome this problem?
If I use 3 colors, I should forget any comic-style t-shirt...
You are correct that for vector images, it is limited to three colors, however three colors does not have to be limiting. As with vectors, you can then choose any of our Flex or Flock colors we offer, like glow in the dark, sparkle, reflective, glitter, and a variety of other colors. If you are thinking comic style products, then check out the shop of comic artists Katz & Goldt, on of our top German shops! They offer a variety of designs in 1-3 colors and if you click on the design, then you can see the range of products, product colors, and design colors they can offer with their vector designs.
For digital images, Spreadshirt does allow printing on colored apparel as well. In the US, we recently released Digital Direct, which prints the ink directly onto the product. With Digital Direct, you can print any design on colored and white apparel. Currently, there are a limited amount of products which use Digital Direct on colored apparel, however we will eventually replace all of our products and older Digital Printing methods in the future with Digital Direct. For colored apparel and products which are not supported by Digital Direct at this time, we do offer Digital Transfer Overlay, which prints digital images on colored apparel, with some limitations. If you upload a transparent png file, then your transparency will be supported. You can read more about our Digital printing here.
Thank you very much for the info, Temple! As I understand it, you're related to Spreadshirt in some way.
So, I have a question: Spreadshirt and LaFraise.com seem to work together, so the latter can print in more colors for their printed t-shirts. Am I right? So, technically, Spreadshirt CAN print in more colors, it is just that probably it is only profitable when large orders are placed. True or false?
My designs are kinda similar to the ones you can buy at LaFraise, so... I'm curious about it
Well, as I see it, I have two different ways to overcome my problem:
1) Work on my designs in order to reach the same quality with less colors, I could do that and it might give certain direction to the whole idea. Thing is, I'm used to work on detailed comic-style designs, so I often see me carried away in the process, detailing way too much.
2) Go for digital printing and/or find someone who lets me print in up to 8 colors, I've been browsing a little bit more and the printmojo guys offer it as long as you order 100 pieces per design. This takes money but allows me to offer colorful designs.
The process for LaFraise is different, then our Spreadshirt Shops. With LaFraise, only particular designs are printed and those shirts are pre-printed, so there is a select number of stock and only those can be purchased. The LaFraise products are silk screen, which is not a printing process offered for our Spreadshirt shops, since all products are print on demans. Not all submitted designs will get printed on Tshirts, since it is a design competition.
You can always offer both Plot Printing with three colored designs and Digital Printing in your shop. Some of your designs may work well with three colors, while others may not, so you are able to use both printing process in your Spreadshirt shop and offer a variety of designs, colors, and possibilities.
Color restrictions 
