What is raster artwork and is that good for a t-shirt design?
Raster artwork is a type of compressed file format for images. It is the most common format because there are so many different file extensions that use this format. Some that you might be familiar with are jpeg's, bitmaps, png's, and gifs. These types of files are very useful in web design but not so functional when it comes to t-shirt printing.
The main reason they are not preferred format for T-shirt printing is because of the lack of ability to resize without losing quality. Also, unless the dots per inch is very high in the 300 to 600 range, the edges may come out jagged in the print. Raster artwork very much follows the rule junk in, junk out.
However, raster artwork isn't as evil as it sounds. T-shirt printing companies use these types of files all the time to send to customers or internally for reviewing. The file share easily and can be opened on almost any computer. The opposite to raster artwork is vector artwork and these file formats can only be opened by computers with special programs that the original artwork was created in.
Raster artwork can be a great starting point to get a quote or to share your concept with a t-shirt printer. Most T-shirt printers will gladly convert your raster design into vector artwork without much trouble.
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