Graphic for printing on the back of a t-shirt

[Dino]

Hello,
I am not sure if this is even a necessary worry of mine nut I will pitch it out anyway. I will be printing the attached file on the back of a white t-shirt and I wondered if there was any technique that could be used to reduce the harshness or abruptness of the image that may be seen when the image is printed onto the white shirt. The color at the edges of the image is very light / almost white so fortunetly in most areas of the print you may not be able to clearly see the edge. if I am not making any sense I guess what I am trying to say is I would like for it to seem like the image fades away at the edges slighhtly rather than seeing a clear edge of the picture. I could imagine using some kind of edge eraser tool with a spotty brush or partial opacity but not really sure the best way to try and achieve it. The picture unfortunetly has texy of my url running very close to the edges so I would like to be careful that we don't fade any text away. Just wondered I would see if there was a quick and easy way to do it. Ideas are welcome. If you do any work please post back your .psd file and a brief description (if it's not too complex) of how you did what you did.
Thanks,
Joe

 

[ALB68]

I am sure that Vista Print is using DTG (Direct to Garment) printing. If you don't want to see a transition at the edges of the shirt take the background layers into ACR (Camera Raw under filters) and increase the white slider. Then sample your whites around the edges, they need to be RGB 255,255,255 or CMYK 0,0,0,0.

 

[Dino]

I am sure that Vista Print is using DTG (Direct to Garment) printing. If you don't want to see a transition at the edges of the shirt take the background layers into ACR (Camera Raw under filters) and increase the white slider. Then sample your whites around the edges, they need to be RGB 255,255,255 or CMYK 0,0,0,0.

I am really green to most of this stuff so please give me a little time to come up to spead with tools and terms...
*By the background layer I would assume you mean the Bass-Fishing-Wall layer.
*Into ACR (Camera Raw under filters) Is that in PS v12 or is it in another tool? I did a cursery look in PS filters and nothing stood out as what you are talking about.
*Then Sample whites around edges.... will that be with the eyedropper or a specific selction tool within the filter?
*"they need to be RGB 255,255,255 or CMYK 0,0,0,0" so are you saying just to be sure that my selections meet the rgb 255,255,255 or CMYK 0,0,0,0?

Thanks for the replies and patience.

-Joe

 

[ALB68]

*By the background layer I would assume you mean the Bass-Fishing-Wall layer.
*Into ACR (Camera Raw under filters) Is that in PS v12 or is it in another tool? I did a cursery look in PS filters and nothing stood out as what you are talking about.
*Then Sample whites around edges.... will that be with the eyedropper or a specific selction tool within the filter?
*"they need to be RGB 255,255,255 or CMYK 0,0,0,0" so are you saying just to be sure that my selections meet the rgb 255,255,255 or CMYK 0,0,0,0?

Your bottom layers in the stacking order that have white backgrounds
I believe you have ACR in CS5 but I don't think it accessible as a filter until a later version.
Yes, with your eyedropper or you can go to Window/Info and as you move your cursor over the various areas you can see what may need adjusting . It all looks pretty good though and I doubt much of anything would be perceivable. Not sure I would go to a lot of trouble.
Isn't Vista Print asking for this in CMYK? Your in the RGB color space now. This can get kind of weird here on how the colors are going to look. Be careful here or you might get a surprise when you see the printed shirts.

Notice the grey areas in this. I proofed your colors in CMYK and the colors inside the text for example have a gamut warning, that means they won't look like the RGB colors when printed with a commercial cmyk printer.

 

[Dino]

Your bottom layers in the stacking order that have white backgrounds
I believe you have ACR in CS5 but I don't think it accessible as a filter until a later version.
Yes, with your eyedropper or you can go to Window/Info and as you move your cursor over the various areas you can see what may need adjusting . It all looks pretty good though and I doubt much of anything would be perceivable. Not sure I would go to a lot of trouble.

I was kind of wondering if this picture was actually worth worying about consifering it's natural fade already. I will research the ACR idea for next time but I will likely leave it alone for now. Thanks.

Isn't Vista Print asking for this in CMYK? Your in the RGB color space now. This can get kind of weird here on how the colors are going to look. Be careful here or you might get a surprise when you see the printed shirts.

Yeah Vista Print seems to be asking for CMYK. I was wondering if I should try and deal with this as well. Any suggestions how to do it? I will try to find and read some How-To's as well but I would appreciate recomendations/directions throught a conversion process should you have any.

Thanks,
Joe

 

[ALB68]

I was kind of wondering if this picture was actually worth worying about consifering it's natural fade already. I will research the ACR idea for next time but I will likely leave it alone for now. Thanks.


Yeah Vista Print seems to be asking for CMYK. I was wondering if I should try and deal with this as well. Any suggestions how to do it? I will try to find and read some How-To's as well but I would appreciate recomendations/directions throught a conversion process should you have any.

Thanks,
Joe

See above edit

 

[Dino]

Notice the grey areas in this. I proofed your colors in CMYK and the colors inside the text for example have a gamut warning, that means they won't look like the RGB colors when printed with a commercial cmyk printer.
View attachment 52877

ALB68,
WOW that's unexpected. Thanks for the heads up on that. If you have had any experience with this how will it likely print if I do nothing? Do you expect Vistaprint would have some kind of on the fly correction?

Is there something that I can do to try and convert the RGB file to CMYK before I post the file up for printing?
Please let me know.

Thanks,
Joe

 

[ALB68]

@ALB68,
WOW that's unexpected. Thanks for the heads up on that. If you have had any experience with this how will it likely print if I do nothing? Do you expect Vistaprint would have some kind of on the fly correction?

Is there something that I can do to try and convert the RGB file to CMYK before I post the file up for printing?
Please let me know.


Thanks,
Joe

Yes, go to Edit/Convert to Profile. A window showing your destination space to be Working CMYK. Be advised when you do this the file will be flattened. I suggest you do this on a duplicate of the original (Image/Duplicate) to keep your original intact. The colors now appear to be within gamut. Your shirt back will now be ready to send to the printer. You need to follow the same advice on the pocket.

Edit: I just noticed this. Your image for the back of the shirt is 72ppi. This is too low for the printer's requirement of 175. You may be able to get by with resampling but your going to lose quality.

Another edit:I have used Genuine Fractals to upsample this to the required 175ppi. Now CMYK with proper resolution requirement. Download the flattened PSD from here https://www.dropbox.com/s/aywq0gprvh4zcff/FishingLakeHartwell%20Shirt%20Back%20cmyk%20resized.psd?dl=0 You won't need to do anything further to that one.