Profile for welshalex - Printing Process

- Full Catalog
- Stock Chart
- Sale: $9 $12 $15
- Art Prints
- Gift Certificates
- 12 Month Tee Club
- Retail Store

- Full Catalog
- Stock Chart
- Sale: $9 $12 $15
- Art Prints
- Gift Certificates
- 12 Month Tee Club
- Retail Store

welshalex aka Alexandra Tedford is 26.8 years old, has been a member since March 8, 2005, has scored 1153 submissions, giving an average score of 2.81.

AIM: alextedford2@hotmail.com

Sep 28 '07 by welshalex

5 Comments

Watch this Share:

Printing Process

I just saw this comment in an old blog about designing tshirts....

"Pantones are pantone colors. Pantones colors are the standard used in spot color printing. It's the best way to most accurately match a color to the ink.
I'm sure sadly, most people just design in RGB or even worse CMYK. I used to work as a Production Artist at a place that did screenprinting, so I know how much fun it is to match colors to pantone colors. It's a real blast, trust me!"

I do designs in RGB, because they are initially going to be for screen viewing.
I presumed that threadless would then mix colours based on the CMYK split.
Should I be designing in RGB?

I'm interested in what actually happens, if anyone out there knows.

d3d on Sep 28 '07 at 8:11am

i design in rgb. it's the internet after all, so it's got to look good on screen to ever have a chance of print. i'm sure matching is an accepted part of the process.

welshalex on Sep 28 '07 at 8:16am

Thanks for that. If you've never had a problem designing in RGB with 3 prints under your belt, it's good enough for me.

5 days later

betterthanhuman on Oct 04 '07 at 1:44am

I am the Senior Designer at Righteous Clothing. We do all our screen printing in-house. Our process begins with outputting the design in spot colors. Rarely do we print in 4-color process. If we do it is only on white shirts. We use a simulated process technique for dark garments that uses 5-7 spot colors. For designs like most of the pieces you see here on Threadless, we use solid spot colors. Spot colors can exist in either RGB or CMYK color spaces. In the end they are all output as black and white transparencies, one for each spot color.
When it comes time to choose an ink color we generally pick a PMS color that most closely resembles what we see on-screen. We almost always choose a Pantone color becasue we have formulas to mix ink that will match those PMS colors. This allows us to reliably repeat any job with an exact color match. Even years down the road.
So, to sum up, the design colors and ink colors are completely separate. You could design something in four shades of green, output the film, then choose completely different ink colors to actually print. However, the ink is most likely chosen to approximate the colors seen on-screen.

betterthanhuman on Oct 04 '07 at 1:47am

By the way, I looked a the designs from that guy grimey...
That dude is a serious munch. He's the kind of under-educated hack that I was talking about in my blog.

welshalex on Oct 04 '07 at 10:01am

Thanks so much for the insight!
Glad you looked up 'grimey', he got me wound up something rotten!

You must be logged in to leave a comment.

→ All of my 9 photos

→ All of my designs

I like alpacas, big dogs (especially mine), Hong Kong, Calvin & Hobbes, walking, Moomins, Elvis, ugly ornaments no-one else will want, Studio Ghibli stuff, cooking & eating (especially cheese), soul & motown, James Stewart, gardening, Hitchcock, old things, hoarding things....lots of stuff....