Printing photos on t-shirts is very similar to printing a graphic (for our purposes this is any art piece that is not a photo), and with a high quality photo you can get a very nice shirt. Black and white photo prints are very simple and treated as a 1-colour job, where the “black” is the colour of the ink and the “white” is the colour of the shirt.
Full colour printing
A full colour photo is a little more complex. First we use software to separate the photo in to 4 colours, cyan, magenta, yellow and black (this is called 4 colour process and allows us to recreate full colour images). This would be treated as a 4 colour job and works best on white t-shirts. Other shirt colours (black, blue, red, etc.) would require either a white or discharge underbase to allow the colours to show properly (by creating a white area on the coloured shirt). Full colour print on a coloured shirt would be a 5 colour job.
It’s important to keep in mind that you pay by the colour and that a full colour photo print is inherently more expensive than it’s 1 colour counterpart. More isn’t always better, sometimes a one colour image can leave a greater impression. If you have any question about printing photos on t-shirts or would like to get a FREE quote, you can email us at [email protected] or call the shop at 506-642-6563.
What was the density of the thread of the sieve you used for the photographic images? And where can I buy a sieve like that?
Greetings a fan from the Netherlands.
Hey Daniel – we used a 230 mesh count screen for the 1 colour photo, and for the 4 colour we used 330 mesh count screens. These can be purchased at your local screen printing supply shop, or online.