Spot Color Printing: The most common form of printing, spot color printing uses a full-tone of color to create an image. Each color in the image is printed separately on its own screen, affecting the cost, but up to 12 spot colors on one location can be printed.
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- Yields Vibrant, Professional Quality Prints
- Print on any color garment
- Price: Less Expensive to More expensive, depending on the number of colors printed
- Used For: Most standard print of logos, graphics, and text
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Half-Tone Printing: A frequently used technique in printing that allows lesser amount of ink in a certain color to be used, allowing it to mix with the garment color or other print colors to create the illusion of more colors than are actually being printed
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- Yields more muted, lighter tones of color
- Print on any color garment, recommended for dark prints on light color garments for best results
- Price: Each half tone of a color is no more expensive than its full tone - a great way to save money when an additional color is needed in some situations
- Used For: Gradients, Background images, Using a Single color to look like its more than 1 color
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Grayscale Printing: An inexpensive way to make a photograph or other multi color image into apparel. A grayscale of the image is created using full and half tones of black. Then the image can be printed in that "grayscale" version on a garment in any print color you choose.
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- Yields a Combination of Vibrant and Muted Color, Quality depends on size and resolution of photo
- Print on any color garment, recommended for dark prints on light color garments for best results
- Price: Inexpensive - the cheapest way to print a photograph or multi-colored image
- Used For: One color versions of photos and multi-color images
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4-Color CMYK Process Printing: When printing a full color image or photograph that involves many colors and many gradients or shades of colors, process prints are used. The 4-Color CMYK process uses the basic colors Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black to create the image, much like an inkjet printer.
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- Yields more muted, lighter colors (additional spot colors are recommended for text or items that need to stand out in the print)
- Print only on white garments
- Price: The lesser expensive way to create full color prints when many colors or shades of colors are involved
- Used For: Photographs or Multi-Colored images with many tones of color when printing on a white shirt
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Simulated Process Printing: When printing a full color logo with many shades and tones of colors and a more vibrant, sharp print is desired, a simulated process is used. Unlike the 4-Color CMYK process, Sim-Process prints use a combination of spot colors and half tones to create all the colors in the image.
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- Yields vibrant, professional quality prints
- Print on any color garment
- Price: This is a more expensive option to print multiple colors and shades than the 4-Color CMYK process, but it is still less expensive than using individual spot colors for every shade. Typically it involves the use of 4-8 colors to create the design.
- Used for: Full color images with many tones of color when printing on a dark shirt
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Distressed Printing: In order to achieve a cracked, worn-in, eroded look, artists utilize filters prior to printing to remove parts of the images in a way to give it that vintage look.
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- Yields professional quality, eroded prints
- Print on any color garment, recommended for dark prints on light color garments for best results
- Price: There is no additional fee for making a print look eroded
- Used For: Vintage-looking prints
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