Digital to Garment basics
Digital to Garment basicsDigital to garment printing is new to the decorated apparel industry. There are a few items which should be pointed out when deciding to go the dtg route
Screen printing is what the name says it is. The colors are pressed onto the garment by pressing the ink through a screen. The inks are custom mixed and can be pantone matched.
Screen printing is labor intensive and is not conducive to small orders.
Digital Printing is clean
Digital to garment printing (DTG) is very easy to do and is very clean. There are no screens used in the process. It works on the principal of a ink jet printer that sprays the ink on a garment. The process is easy and quick. Screen printing is actually spot printing. Spot printing is one color at a time. Sometimes you can be limited by the colors in the design if your supplier doesn’t have the screens available on their printing carousel.
Screen printing is Mechanical
Screen printing is more of a mechanical process where DTG printing is more technical. It is very easy to print a design from a computer screen than mechanically separating colors and making a screen for each color. Clean up is very easy with DTG where as with screen printing you need solvents and a means to dispose of the extra ink just mixed for the project. DTG is very organic friendly.
CYMK color selection
DTG printing uses the CYMK (cyan, yellow, magenta and black) color pallet to get the final result. This means you can have as many colors you need vs the limited color selection of screen printing.
Specific printing substrates
One drawback for digital printing is the fabric it can be printed on. Because the inks are water based DTG needs a substrate which can absorb water based inks. Water based inks will not adhere to stain resistant materials (aprons, work shirts, nylon athletic shirts, ets). We always recommend ring spun cotton for the best results.
Art Requirement
The best art is high resolution graphics 300 dpi or more to get the best results. Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, and Photoshop are all capable of producing great artwork.
Digital printing on darks is no problem as we have a built in pretreatment process on our Kornit printers.
You should consider digital printing;
- A lot of colors in the design
- Rush order same day tees
- You need a reorder quickly
- You need a specksample
- Customization of names in the design
- Detailed art work (we never charge for colors)
In summary Direct To Gamrent Printing is fast becoming the norm and we will see it more and more as the nascent process is being refined.
