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How To Prepare Your Artwork

This page explains how to prepare your artwork for upload to our system

Our system enables you to either upload ready-to-be-printed gangsheets, or by uploading your images and easily creating your own gangsheets with our online Gangsheet Builder. Here is how you can prepare your images or gangsheets...


Images

For the easiest way to create your own gangsheets, you can upload your images to our system and create your gangsheets using our powerful Gangsheet Builder. In order to get the best results, we recommend that your images are either of the following

  • Transparent PNG bitmap images with a resolution of 300DPI (or higher)
  • Scalable vector graphics in SVG format

Gangsheets

The only currently supported format for Gangsheets is transparent PNG files (shortly we will be allowing PDFs too).

Our system requires gangsheets to be a minimum resolution of 300DPI (or higher). This is to ensure that your artwork is nice and sharp when printed.


Experiencing problems with artwork exported from Canva or similar apps?

Are you experiencing problems with exported artwork from online applications such as Canva? This could be because Canva doesnÆt export in a high enough resolution for print. By default Canva, exports artwork at only 72dpi or 96dpi - these resolutions are typical for most computer screens. Maybe it's because Canva believe you are designing for screen usage only. It's not very well documented by Canva, but it can be easy to fix. This short video shows how.

Please watch up to about 2mins 17s. The rest of the video doesnÆt really apply, and indeed we donÆt agree with the advice at the end where it suggests you can ôup scaleö lower resolutions (eg 96dpi) to higher ones (ie 300dpi). This type of upscaling loses valuable detail in your artwork, so it will not achieve desirable results. It is better to begin with images that are high enough resolution from the start.


Other Key Info About Artwork

Image Resolution

As our gangsheet builder generates gangsheets at 300DPI (Dots Per Inch) in resolution, any uploaded images that are not to this resolution (or higher) will be restricted in how large you can arrange them on the gangsheet. We therefore recommend that you upload PNG images that are at least 300DPI, or that you use scalable images thanks to the SVG format type.

Image Transparency

Unless your images contain transparent areas, your images will be printed as a solid block. This is why we recommend uploading transparent images. The transparent areas will allow the colour of the garment to show through. The best file type to use for transparency is PNG. SVG also supports transparency, and can be scaled to any size. Unfortunately, image file types such as JPG or JPEG do not support transparency, and therefore are not supported by our system.

Image Colours

Digital Printing is generally done using the CMYK system (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Key (Black)). However, most of us tend to work with images on computer or device screens that use the RGB system (Red, Green Blue). The 2 processes are very different to each other, and the subject is quite complex (see our article here about it), but we have devised an easy way for our customers to decide on the best way to work: