The Letterville BullBoard: Scanning a picture to use on t-shirts

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Posted by Cynthia Pack (Member # 1399) on :

As always I'm embarressed to ask so many questions. Please don't keep count. I find better information here than from technical support. A customer wants me to scan a picture of his car, and then put it on a t-shirt for him. I don't know where to start. I haven't even tried to scan a picture to put in to GA yet. Where do I start? Do you have good luck in doing such?

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Where the possibilities are endless

Posted by Ken Henry (Member # 598) on :

Hi there Cynthia. At the top of this bulletin board is a purple panel which identifies the Resource Centre. If you click on that to open it, scroll down to the Digital category and open that topic, you will find an excellent tutorial called "Scanning Tips". I'd suggest that you bookmark this as there's quite a bit of information there to digest.

However, the information given there should answer most of your questions regarding scanning for digital printing.

PS: Check out other areas within the resource centre as well. You may be quite surprised to find how much information is stored there, on a host of topics.

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Ken Henry
Henry & Henry Signs
London, Ontario Canada
(519) 439-1881
e-mail kjmlhenry@home.

10,000 sperm swimming for that egg...and I won!

Posted by The Moon (Member # 452) on :

OH Oh oh! I'm so glad you asked! I was gearing up to do a how to on just this and as usual I'm lagging behind... so here it goes!

Scan it in, in color (duh, but you'd be surprised!) and so that you have your desired final size at 55 lpi (lines per inch) See the scanning how to's to get the technical stuff on that. (High res scan to enlarge image at low res final so you don't lose detail, yada yada yada)

In Photoshop, open your image and convert it to CMYK (if it's not all ready) and then apply registration marks to it. Now split the channels. This will pop out 4 separate windows of Black, Cyan, Yellow and Magenta. (Your original image will disappear from the Photoshop desktop, but none to worry, it's still on your hard drive... if you saved it in that state first. )

Starting with the Black convert it to a bitmap, choose halftone with a screen at 55 lpi and round shapes at 45°. Next do the Yellow at 90°, the Cyan at 105°, and the Magenta at 75°. The angles are very important. If you don't angle each separation differently you will get a moire pattern and it really looks nasty.

My new friend, Jim, shot these off acetate and burned them into the screens for about 8 minutes. The acetate gave a crisper shot, but make sure that your laser printer doesn't melt your acetate or leave ghost images as it prints it. Our did, and it still worked, buuuttttt the reg marks were off a 1/32 of an inch on the left side of some of the separations and it proved to be a challenge to line up on the screens. I'd suggest printing to velum and working on the longer burn times, but I don't shoot screens, so...?

The slow but here side of the Moon

P.S. If you need any more details or have any questions, e-mail me direct... I landed a "day job" starting Thursday and don't know how often I will be back in here. But I will check my e-mail!

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The Moon
aka: Stefenie Harris
Moonlight Designs
Pollock Pines, CA
learnin' somethin' new every day!

Posted by Kelli (Member # 248) on :

Cynthia, are you silk-screening the shirt or doing a heat press? Stef's how-to on preparing screens is great if it's going to be silk-screened. If heat pressing, it's a little simpler, no separations or angles necessary. To keep it simple, when dealing with standard 4x6 photos, scan at 300 dpi and then enlarge within your software program.(Alternatively, you could scan at 150dpi @100% of the output size, but let's not complicate things) With heat transfers, the important thing is to remember to mirror the image. Depending on software, this can be done at time of printing by clicking on a []mirror/reverse image button in the print dialog box, or you may be able to just mirror the image within the software program and print normally on the transfer media.

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Kelli Cajigas aka Janda
Dolphin deSigns & Banners
“A satisfied customer will tell two friends, a dissatisfied customer will tell ten.”

Posted by Rick Sacks (Member # 379) on :

If it can be done on a light colored shirt, just go to Kinko's and their color copier can enlarge and reduce and print it right onto heat transfer material. Iron it on and you're in business!No scanning. No computer programs. No Chit.

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The SignShop
Mendocino, California
"Where the Redwoods meet the Surf"

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