What is direct to garment t-shirt printing?
Direct To Garment t-shirt printing is relatively new in the t-shirt printing world. It is a print method that bypasses the film printing and screen creation that are two integral steps in the process of screen printing. The print machine is actually connected to the computer and the design can be printed from a program on the computer straight to the shirt in the print machine.
This is very different from screen printing where a design has to be printed to fail and then buried into a screen and put on a manual or automatic printing press. The technology for Direct To Garment t-shirt printing is considered high tech compared to the more low-tech process of t-shirt screen printing. Since it is still considered an emerging technology, it still has a long ways to go to get past the bugs and glitches.
Some of these bugs include not being able to vibrantly print light colored inks on dark t-shirts. The actual ink and the amount of ink used in the process is too weak to pop off of a dark t-shirt. The darkness of the t-shirt influences the ink too much and doesn't provide enough contrast.
Even with its problems though, it is still a great print method when a job calls for less than six t-shirts. Direct To Garment t-shirt printing can print a lot of colors on a small quantity of shirts at a very economical price. This is very different from screen printing but in a good way. It also has the control and power to print photographs without dealing with four color process separations on the artwork. This too has been one of its greatest benefits.
Direct To Garment T-shirt printing is inevitably the print method of the future. Maybe not the near future but as the process improves, its ease-of-use and time-saving potential will make it more and more of a mainstay in t-shirt printing world.
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