One of the most common problems we run into while attempting to make your apparel exactly to your heart’s desire is the image quality.
There are two major types of illustration files, raster (commonly in the form of .jpg and .png) and vector (commonly in the form of .ai and .eps). Raster images are made up of a countless number of different colored squares (AKA pixels), while vector is essentially a mathematical equation that describes location of the objects in relation to one another.
You might ask, “Yes Kyle, thanks for that elaborate description, but why does this matter towards getting my shirt printed?” Well, we don’t print using a countless number of tiny squares, and we certainly don’t print hundreds of different colors.
Our screens are made up of thousands of tiny dots, this allows you to print the curves you see in just about every piece of art. Additionally, vector art has the ability to be expanded without destroying the quality. You could send me a 1” piece of vector art and I could expand it to 12” with no change done to the overall image quality.
Try opening up a word document, copy and pasting a .jpg image from google and expanding it. Better yet! Check out the zoomed-in images I’ve attached below. One image is the hand drawn .jpg picture sent to me, the second is the vector art I recreated in Adobe Illustrator.
I hope this helps explain those pesky art fees or time lost getting your images and logos converted to vector art. If nothing else, at least you can impress a random screen printer you meet at a party with your vector knowledge.
