Art Requirements

The following guidelines are meant to guide in the process of creating and submitting your art for screen printing and to make sure that the art submitted will yield the highest quality final result for your garments.

General Requirements

Spreading Ink takes copyright and licensing violations seriously. Any company logo's or artwork submitted must be accompanied by authorization from the customer that shows they are entitiled to print the design or subject or if they are not the copyright holder that they are licensed to do so by the original copyright holder of the design or logo.

Accepted graphic file formats

  • Corel Draw
  • Adobe Illustrator
  • Photoshop
  • EPS (Encapsulated Post Script)
  • BMP and TIFF
  • JPEG and GIF

Corel Draw

Corel Draw files are accepted in any version up to Corel Draw 12. Corel Draw is a vector based program. Vector based file formats save the mathmatical information required for the program to redraw the image at any size while keeping the file information at a high resolution. This gives an ideal image to work with for screen printing and embroidery. Files should be saved in either RGB 8 bit format or using specific Pantone Solid Coated colors.
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Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator files are accepted in any version up to Adobe Illustrator 10 (CS2). Like Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator files are stored in a vector based file format and produce outstanding results when used for screen printing or embroidery. Adobe Illustrator files can also be resized without losing any resolution and as such a small image can be resized to the proper size for apparel printing without losing any of their detail or crispness. AI files should be saved in 8 bit RGB or using specific Pantone colors from the Pantone Solid Coated Color charts.
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Photoshop

Photoshop files with specific requirements are accepted.
Photoshop files must be saved at the actual size to be printed at 300 dpi resolution,RGB
8 bit color mode. Because Photoshop is a raster file image based program any resizing of the image will reduce the resolution of the image and will result in a lower image quality when screen printed or embroidered. Any layer information should be left intact upon file submission.
Lower resolution images ( 72 dpi) that have been upsampled to 300 dpi will simply take a poor quality image and make it a high resolution poor quality image - the orignal file needs to be high resolution!
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EPS - Encapsulated Post Script

EPS files are accepted and can be generated from many other professional quality graphic imaging creation programs. EPS files need to be saved in the following manner: EPS (DCS2) file format, Composite should be TIF 8 bits/pixel, Single File DCS with no composite, Binary encoding.
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BMP and TIFF

Like Photoshop files, BMP and TIFF files save their information as a raster image (meaning they save the pixel information in the file). Accordingly, BMP and TIFF files can be used if they are created with the following parameters: 300 dpi resolution, image size at the final size to be printed, 8 bit RGB color mode.

It should be noted that resizing a high resolution image so that it will display or print at a larger size will diminish the final print quality as this lowers the resolution of the image. Also lower resolution images ( 72 dpi) that have been upsampled to 300 dpi will simply take a poor quality image and make it a high resolution poor quality image - the orignal file needs to be high resolution!
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What about JPEG and GIF?

JPEG and GIF file formats are very popular, but these file formats were designed to be displayed on computer monitors. While these formats are used extensively throughout the web (because of their low resolution and small download sizes, they do not produce acceptable results when used as the basis for screen printing or embroidery work. If the only file that you have is a JPEG or GIF file our art department can work with you to recreate the image in an acceptable file format. Art charges will normally apply depending on the complexity of the design submitted. Please feel free to call or e-mail us for more details.
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