For the life of me I can not get bright colors out of my M5. I have read and tried all the tricks, hovered press over shirt before pressing, brightest red I could make in photoshop, white underbase raised, pause between white and color print, content base unchecked, blue at 65, yellow at 29 and red at 100
Bright colors N/A
[Anajet]
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I would try all these things:
You could change the pretreat ratio a bit.
Instead of the general 50:50 solution try this:
-60-65% powerbright pretreat
-40-35% DISTILLED water. MUST BE DISTILLED. Even filtered water will give you duller results because of the minerals messing with the chemistry
-Add 2-3 capfuls of distilled white vinegar to your wager sprayer bottle.
I also noticed you are printing on a heather grey shirt. All heather shirts are not 100% cotton. They are always a polyester blend and because these inks and pretreats are meant for natural fibers.. the higher the polyester percentage, the less vibrant the white ink will be.. which in turn will affect your colors vibrancy.
If you were to print the same graphic on a 100% cotton shirt and compare the two, you will see that the cotton shirt is much more vibrant.
What brand of shirts are you using? The brand of shirt can also affect the vibrancy of the shirt. Gildans are probably the worst brand of shirt to use for any DTG printer. The way that they are knitted and weaved makes them prone to loss of vibrancy and pinholes to show through when you print a white underbase onto the shirt.
The smoother the canvas you print on the better result you will receive. DTG's love 100% Ringspun cotton. Tight weaves, smoother surface, finer knit. I reccomend using SPECTRA Apparel or Hanes Nano's.
And lastly, settings.
on your mpower, id try these color settings.
On the Print Settings tab..
set your color layer to fine wide.
On the Color Adjustments tab..
bump up the color saturation to a +8 or +10.
On the Underbase tab..
Adjust your underbase accordingly depending on the graphic.
I normally adjust the Color Contrast between 80-90
to get a good Red i normal put the slider between 30-40
Blues and Greens i put it around 15-20
Try all the things i mention combined and let me know how it goes!
Hope this helps you out!
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Also... when you create your images on photoshop, create them in CMYK FIRST. By doing this you will get a more realistic look at what the printer is able to output. (remember you are using CMYK inks.)
after you finish your artwork, convert the color mode back to RGB so that you can save the image as a .png
Things to remember... i mentioned this before in a previous post..
Red is a primary color. Imagine I gave you an actual water color paint set composed of just CMYK and I asked you to make a pure bright red. You cant. You can get close, but the reds will always be slightly yellow tinted or slightly magenta tinted. Same goes for creating orange. You need red and yellow to make orange. You dont have red, nor can you create a pure red with the inks you have. Does this make more sense?
The printer is not using RGB inks so keep that in mind when you are creating your artwork. Create the image in CMYK... when you convert it back to RGb the colors wont change, you'll just be able to save it as the png file we recommend. Also, when you drop the image on the RIP always make sure you check the "enable icc previewb box" to get a more accurate look at what the printer is able to output.
after you finish your artwork, convert the color mode back to RGB so that you can save the image as a .png
Things to remember... i mentioned this before in a previous post..
Red is a primary color. Imagine I gave you an actual water color paint set composed of just CMYK and I asked you to make a pure bright red. You cant. You can get close, but the reds will always be slightly yellow tinted or slightly magenta tinted. Same goes for creating orange. You need red and yellow to make orange. You dont have red, nor can you create a pure red with the inks you have. Does this make more sense?
The printer is not using RGB inks so keep that in mind when you are creating your artwork. Create the image in CMYK... when you convert it back to RGb the colors wont change, you'll just be able to save it as the png file we recommend. Also, when you drop the image on the RIP always make sure you check the "enable icc previewb box" to get a more accurate look at what the printer is able to output.
Where do you order your SPECTRA shirts from? Our normal supplier does not carry the SPECTRA brand
That would be awesome!
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The website for SpectraUSA is spectratees.com
The have a few hoops to jump through to purchase from, but Deana is correct. Their tees are awesome for DTG.
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