Artwork & Resources

Artwork guidelines

The single most common cause of a delayed order is artwork that is not ready to print. Here is what works, in order of preference:

File types

• Vector — AI, EPS, SVG, PDF. Best possible option. Scales to any size without losing sharpness, and lets us adjust colours cleanly.
• PNG with a transparent background. Excellent for DTF. Send it at 300 DPI at the size it will actually print.
• High-resolution JPG or TIFF. Workable, but has no transparency — we may need to knock out the background, which can cost time on detailed edges.
• Screenshots, logos pulled from a website, anything blurry at 100% zoom. These usually need to be redrawn. We can do that — it just is not free.

Resolution

Aim for 300 DPI at final print size. A 12" wide chest print wants an image around 3,600 pixels wide. A 1,000-pixel image blown up to 12" will look soft no matter how good the printer is.

Things that catch people out

• Thin lines and small text. Very fine detail can drop out or fill in. If a line is thinner than about 1pt at final size, it is worth thickening.
• White elements. On DTF, white prints as actual white ink. On a white garment that is fine — but confirm you want it, because it changes the look.
• Drop shadows and glows. Soft edges fade out rather than cutting cleanly. They work, but not always the way the screen suggests.
• RGB vs CMYK. Screens are brighter than ink. Very saturated blues, oranges and greens shift the most between screen and print.

Not sure what you have?

Send it anyway. We review every file before it runs and will tell you honestly what it needs — before you pay for anything. If it needs redrawing, vector tracing starts at $20 and full recreations at $75. Embroidery digitizing starts at $35.

Gang sheet layout

If you are nesting your own sheet:

• Sheets are 22" wide as standard — build to that width
• Leave at least 0.5" between designs so they can be cut apart
• Transparent background, no crop marks, no guides, no background boxes — anything visible in the file will print
• Size every design exactly as you want it pressed

Send a finished sheet →

Heat press basics

General principles that hold regardless of the specifics:

• Pre-press the garment for a few seconds to drive out moisture and flatten wrinkles. This matters more than most people expect.
• Even pressure across the whole design. Seams, zips and collars create high spots that leave the rest under-pressed.
• Peel at the right moment. Hot peel and cold peel films behave differently, and peeling at the wrong temperature is the most common failure.
• Let it cool fully before stretching, folding or washing.

Washing guidance to pass on to your customers: turn inside out, wash cold, tumble dry low, and skip the iron directly on the print.

Still stuck?

Email kc@americanstitchlab.com with your file and what you are trying to make. A person reads it.