Whether you’re new to the whole design shebang or a seasoned designer, there are some tricks that you will continue to learn throughout your amateur or professional career. One of the difficulties many designers face is perfecting the black T-shirt.
You may say that, isn’t black is just black? While that might be the case for online designs, it is completely opposite when it comes to printing black t-shirts. Especially on fabric, black is made from a couple of other colours in order to make it look like a true, rich black.
When you are making online designs, a simple process of four colours i.e. CMYK is used. CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (the black ink). Here is what you need to do, in order to make your black actually look black when printed out.
The default Photoshop black: If you are used to of using Photoshop for your print designs then select the black that you usually select and look at its CMYK values. You’ll notice instantly that these values might not be ideal, C-75%, M-68%, Y-67% and B-90%. Selecting this can cause a couple of issues, and these may include:
Importing into InDesign or Illustrator
Now that you’ve created the design on Photoshop, you want to import it in Illustrator or InDesign with a black background. Everything looks spot on when you place the artwork on your black background document. However, when the printed version arrives, the two blacks can look quite different. The reason why all your print copies will now go to waste is because you didn’t consider that the software might read the black differently. While Photoshop works on the CMYK process as mentioned above, InDesign or Illustrator uses the swatches as follows; C-0%, M-0%, Y-0% and K- 100% thus the different results.
Ink Coverage
The easiest way of saving your design from over inking is by exporting your design as PDF file and checking it in the Adobe Acrobat Output Preview tool. Simply switch the Total Area Coverage on, now you’d be able to see all the areas that have 280% or more of ink coverage. The areas will be highlighted and you’d be able to solve the issue.
Fine Text
This might be the biggest problem when it comes to black ink printing with text. When you create fine text in Photoshop, especially in Fine Serif fonts in the default black, the printed version will be blurry and fuzzy. So you need to be assertive of which black you are using.
The easiest hack to perfecting the black colour is by selecting the right values. Input the following values C-0%, M-0%, Y-0% and K-100% and this will ensure that you get the richest and deepest black.
T shirt printing companies in Singapore will offer you different programs and designers in order for you to select the perfect design and get your customised T-shirt printed. If you aren’t familiar with the design process, we would suggest that you get in touch with one of the companies and get your customised tees in their proper colours.
