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Print production

Every colour is
another screen.

Screen printing charges by the colour, registers by hand, and cannot print a soft gradient without halftones. Artwork that ignores those three facts arrives at the shop as a quote for six screens and a phone call. Here is how to prepare it properly.

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The constraint

Spot colour is the default, not the exception

Unlike digital print, a screen press lays down one ink at a time through one stencil at a time. That single fact drives every preparation decision.

One flat colour = one screen

Costs scale with colour count, not with area or detail. A two-colour design is dramatically cheaper to run than a five-colour one, and the difference is usually invisible on a shirt at conversational distance. Reduce ruthlessly before you quote.

Gradients become halftones

A screen cannot lay ink at 40% opacity. Gradients are simulated with halftone dots, which need a coarser line count on fabric than on paper. Either design in flats, or accept a visible dot pattern and specify the LPI with the printer.

The workflow

Four steps, in this order

Step
01

Vectorize

Convert the raster to editable paths — separations are built from shapes, and shapes are what a stencil is burned from.

Step
02

Reduce to spot colours

Collapse the palette to true flats and assign each a spot value. Antialiased edges from a traced raster will otherwise produce dozens of near-identical fills.

Step
03

Build the separations

One layer per colour, each as solid shapes. Add a trap or slight overlap where colours meet so hand registration has tolerance.

Step
04

Export for the shop

Vector PDF or SVG with outlined type, at final print size, with the colour list written down. Do not send a flattened preview.

Before you send it

What the print shop needs from you

Every item here is something a shop otherwise has to guess at, and guessing is what turns into a reprint.

Colour count and values — Named spot colours, not "the blue from the website". Screens are burned to a list.

Final print dimensions — In mm or inches at 1:1. Scaling artwork after separations are built breaks the trapping.

Outlined type — No live fonts. A missing font substitution discovered on the press is an expensive way to find out.

Trap or overlap noted — Say whether you have built trapping in. If you have not, the shop will add it, and it will move your edges slightly.

Related jobs

The rest of the production chain

PNG or JPG to editable SVG

The conversion step — flat editable shapes ready to separate.

Selling the printed product

What happens after the file is right — production and margins.

Press-ready prepress

Bleed, cut paths and spot colour output across print methods.

DTF instead, for small runs

No separations, no screen charges, unlimited colours — where short runs go.

Questions

What operators actually ask

01How many colours should a screen printed design have?+
Commercially, as few as the design survives with — usually one to three. Each additional colour is another screen, another setup, another registration risk, and a higher unit price at low volumes. Designs that look rich in six colours often print almost identically in three once the small accent colours are merged.
02Can I screen print a gradient?+
Yes, via halftones — the gradient is broken into dots of varying size. On fabric this needs a coarser line count (commonly 35–55 LPI) than paper work, so the dots are visible up close. If a smooth blend is essential to the design, screen printing is the wrong process and DTG or transfer will serve better.
03What is trapping and do I need it?+
Trapping is a deliberate slight overlap between adjacent colours so that small registration errors do not show as a white gap. Hand-registered screen work always moves a little. Either build a small overlap yourself where colours meet, or tell the shop you have not so they can add it — the one bad outcome is both of you assuming the other did.
04Why does my traced logo have hundreds of colours?+
Tracing samples antialiased pixels along every edge, producing a spread of near-identical shades that look like one colour on screen. For screen print that is fatal: each shade is nominally a separate plate. Reduce to true flats after vectorizing, snapping edge colours back to the intended fill.
05SVG, PDF or AI — what should I send?+
A vector PDF is the safest universal handoff and what most shops name first. SVG is fine for shops working in modern tooling. Either way: outlined type, real dimensions, no embedded raster, and the colour list in writing. Send a flattened PNG preview alongside so everyone agrees on what it should look like.
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Turn a raster design into separable vector

Convert to flat editable shapes, then reduce to the colour count you actually want to pay for.

Open the vectorizerGenerate vector art instead