Preparing vector artwork for DTF and screen printing

A raster file has a fixed resolution. Printed at business-card size it looks sharp; printed across a chest it looks like a photograph of a logo. A vector has no resolution, so it prints clean at any size.

For DTF specifically, the file is rasterized at print resolution anyway, but starting from a vector means that rasterization happens at the right size with crisp edges, rather than enlarging something that was already soft.

Run the image through a tracer and look at what came back. Then decide which of these you have:

A clean result. Flat colours, hard edges, shapes that correspond to parts of the design. Good, move on.

A usable base. Roughly right, but with artefacts, doubled edges, or too many colours. Fixable in twenty minutes of cleanup.

A mess. Hundreds of paths, banded gradients, fuzzy outlines. The source was too low-resolution or too photographic. Redraw it or ask the customer for better source files.

The third case is common with phone screenshots and social media exports, and recognising it early saves more time than any cleanup technique.

Screen printing charges per colour, because each colour is a separate screen. A design that traced to twelve colours but reads as four needs reducing, both for cost and because twelve-screen registration on a shirt is not a thing anyone wants to do.

DTF prints full colour, so colour count doesn't affect cost. But it does affect file cleanliness, and a design with forty near-identical greens is harder to edit when the customer asks for a change.

Heat transfer vinyl is cut, not printed, so each colour is a separate piece of material to weed and layer. Keep it to two or three.

Real holes, not white shapes. On a white garment nobody notices. On black, every counter in every letter shows up as a white blob. Put the artwork on a dark background and look.

Fine detail at print size. Lines thinner than about half a millimetre tend to disappear or break up in DTF, and they're worse in screen printing. Scale the artwork to the actual print size and inspect.

Stray artefacts. Tracing picks up JPEG noise, compression artefacts, watermarks, and dust from scans. These come through as tiny specks that are invisible on screen at 100% and very visible on a shirt.

Text as outlines. If the design has live text and you send it, the shop needs your fonts. Convert text to outlines before sending. A traced file has this for free, since the trace produces shapes rather than type.

Ask first. If they don't specify:

• —PDF is the safest general answer and handles colour properly
• —EPS if the shop is older or specifically asks
• —SVG rarely, mostly for shops with a modern digital workflow

Keep an editable master regardless of what you send. The format guide covers the differences.

Worth setting expectations with the customer: a vector carries colour values, but what comes off the press depends on the material, the process, and the shop's calibration. A trace of a screenshot inherits whatever colours the screenshot had, which may not be the brand colours at all.

If the customer has brand colour codes, replace the traced colours with the real values rather than trusting what came out of the trace.

Tracer exports PDF and EPS with Pro, and SVG free so you can check the trace quality first.