Have you ever wondered how your designs get printed on apparel items? The answer is simple: DTG printing!

Knowing how to optimize your artwork before you even create or upload it can make all the difference in print quality, sales, and fan/customer loyalty. We’ve put together three of the most common file issues, along with tips on how to avoid them (plus visual examples). Take a look:

1. Saturated colors

Most often, your design should print as it appears in the mockup previews. However, transferring artwork from screen to print cannot reproduce highly saturated/neon shades as the color format changes from RGB to CMYK, which has a more limited color range. In fact, these shades may appear slightly duller or more muted once printed.

To avoid any surprises, make sure to work in CMYK when creating your design. If your design is already saturated, turning down the saturation to around 20-30% should significantly improve the outcome and let those colors truly pop!

2. Glow effects

A very cool effect lots of designers use is outer glow. However, this makes things a bit tricky for dark garments, which need a white underbase to make the design show through on the fabric. If your design contains partial transparency, this can cause cloudy areas to show up when printed. To prevent this, we recommend converting your outer glow effects to halftones.

Curious about how to achieve that? This awesome guide to halftones has got you covered!

3. Low resolution

Last, but definitely not least, you should be mindful of the resolution of your files! To ensure a good quality print, each product offered on the Redbubble marketplace has minimum pixel dimension requirements. Make sure you check the thresholds for all of the products in our Dimensions & Format Help Center article.

But wait! There’s more! The quality of your file matters, too. Resizing a file that is blurry or pixelated to begin with will only make the blurry or pixelated elements larger. Make sure your design is as clear as possible from the very start!

That just about covers it! If you have any other questions about getting your files print-ready, check out the following resources:

• Image Resolution and Printing blog post
• Dimensions & Format Help Center article
• Printing digital designs on products Help Center article
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Happy creating!

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