T Shirt Printing

Hi, am pretty new to photoshop and wondered if anyone had any advice on creating t shirt print designs in it for screen printing?

A friend and I are starting a small company as a hobby selling our t shirts in london, we have all our own artwork and are in the process of tidying it up ready for printing.

We have no experience in this before!! Has anyone done this or got any advice? Not even sure at the moment how to provide art work to the t shirt printers! Still, early days.

First thing to do if you've lined up a company to print the shirts is to establish a dialogue with them so that they can tell you how best to prepare your files for the most efficient file preparation and transfer to the printing process.

It's kind of hard to say what specific things you should do because the type of file you give to the printer is somewhat dependant on the type of image you want to print. These fall generally into two categories....4 (or more) color photographic quality or spot color. You need to know about trapping, dot gain, line screen, etc.

That's why it's a good idea to become friendly with the equipment operators at the company. They'll be able to answer questions, and are usually happy to do so if it will make their job as uncomplicated and streamlined as possible. Remember, the more work they have to do after receiving your files, the more it will cost you.

But let us know about what you find out as that's a very intersting subject and I know I"d like to know more. Now when you say screening that's with individual colours or is that more like an iron on transfer, for the lack of a better reference, with all the colours printed on a film then transfered to the shirt??

Would love to learn more so keep us informed.