Screenprinting and Embroidery Digitizing
Art Guidelines

Knowing What To Send Us Can Save You Money!
All to often, customers who provide artwork for screenprinting and embroidery are unaware as to what to send us. This page will, hopefully, provide you with information that will help streamline your order.

Our computer environment is MacIntosh based. We do have the ability to open PC files.


will be applied to designs that take more than 15 minutes to process.

HARD COPY (artwork that needs to be reproduced from printed paper, t-shirts, etc...)

COMPUTER GENERATED ART (artwork sent to us via email, zip disks, floppys, CDs, etc...)

IN-HOUSE DESIGNED (artwork that we create for you in-house

Hard Copy Artwork
If you bring us a drawing or printout DO NOT COLOR OR SHADE IN THE DRAWING (if possible). Otherwise, we may have to spend hours removing colors and shading in the design.

Questions you need to ask:

• Is your artwork Camera Ready?
  True camera-ready art is a clear black and white image on white paper at a size that can be enlarged to T-shirt dimensions while maintaining image integrity. Lines are thick. There are no grays. Paper is not wrinkled, ripped, or taped together and no smudges, spots, or pencil or pen marks cover the image in any way. Look at your image and determine if it is indeed "camera ready." If not, either locate a better image or expect an art charge for cleanup or new artwork creation time.
  
  
• Is This the only art you can provide?
  The largest and cleanest version of any design you provide goes a long way. Why give us a logo on a napkin when there’s a better rendition on letterhead. The better the quality, the less time and money is spent on reproducing the art.
  
  
• Has your art been reproduced anywhere else?
  Some customers will bring in artwork, thats been previously printed before, and expect us to reproduce the same design. It may be cost effective to contact the service that originally produced the artwork and have it sent to us.
  
  
• What size do you want your design printed?
  We can resize any design to your liking. Unless otherwise specified, we will determine the best size for your design.
  
  
• When necessary, may we substitute Type Fonts?
  We have a wide variety of type fonts in our computer library. Occasionally we stumble across a design that uses a font we don’t have. When this occurs, we can either substitute that font for one that comes close in style or auto trace the original. Auto tracing is more precise, but takes time to execute and will add to the cost of reproduction.

All Artwork sent to us in a Hard copy form requires an art charge.
BBB

Computer Generated Artwork
We welcome artwork sent to us electronically.
Email is probably the most common method for sending your artwork. We do accept artwork delivered on 3.5” floppy disk, Zip disks, and CD’s.

Before Sending Us Your Files, There are a Few Things to Consider:

• What software was the art created in?
  The best scenario is for your art to have been created in is a software we have. Opening and manipulating the design is less restrictive. We’d prefer artwork created in Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Acrobat, and Aldus Freehand.
  
  
• Is this the original file it was created in?
  We work best with the original file that the design it was created in. When a design is converted to a jpeg (or
  similar file format) prepress work cannot be performed and an art charge will be applied to reproduce the design.
  (See “Problem File Formats and Software” below)
  
  
• Did you include all fonts and pictures?
  When sending us your files we require that elements (i.e. pictures, graphics, fonts) used to create the design be included. Any font used in the graphic should be either converted to paths or curves or should be included on the disk (Macintosh Postscript or Type 1 fonts only).

What you can do:

• Convert all your text to outlines (or paths)
• Eliminate traps and masks (or indicate to us they are used in design.)
• If possible convert all colors to Spot colors.
• Include all images (such as tiff, eps, pict, etc...) with files sent.
• Illustrator 10.0 files or higher should be saved as 9.0 or lower before sending.Problem File Formats and Software.
• Provide us a paper print of what the finished design will look like so we can verify the file sent to us is entact.

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ARTWORK NEEDING LITTLE OR NO WORK
Illustrator .AI, .EPS, .ART, .PDF files
Freehand Files
InDesign Files
Corel Draw Files saves as PDFs
Vectored Images and Fonts converted to Outline or Paths

ARTWORK NEEDING WORK (reproducing)
Files saved as JPEG, GIF, TIFF, PICTS, QuickTime, BMP, CDR
Files downloaded from the web
Low Resolution scans
Photoshop Files
Files saved in Corel Draw, Photoshop, Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, Quark Express

FILES WE CANNOT OPEN
Publisher, Canvas, Photo Paint