There are three particular methods usually employed to accomplish screen printing that produces printed garments for promotions, merchandise and fashion. The method most commonly used and best suited for a large variety of graphics is called ‘Spot Colour’, as known by any t-shirt printer. Spot colour printing is best used when printing graphics which are usually not very photographic in nature.
A graphic design professional typically determines the exact Pantone colours that the ink will be matched to in order to produce a high fidelity image. In order to isolate the hues of the ink in the image, Pantone coated or noncoated references are selected. The Pantone system is a global standard for colour matching where every colour is assigned a unique designation.
This method of spot colour printing is particularly suited to the printing of branded promotional garments or merchandise where colour identity and uniformity must remain constant throughout a diverse range of products.
4 Color Process is an additional technique for screen printing. This is the best way to print photographs and illustrations which contain broad colour ranges, tones, and graduations. All magazines and books use this four-color printing process as well.
The inks are transparent and blend with one another on a white backdrop to recreate each of the colours and shades that the original possessed. This is rather more difficult process to achieve on a fabric than it is on paper. However, the actual method used is mostly the same. This method of printing is only useful for white garments, and will not work well on coloured fabrics. The print set up costs are higher than that of simple spot colour designs and as such only suitable for larger print runs of 100+.
When garment screen printers reproduce such full colour images onto coloured fabrics a method called ‘Simulated Process’ is used.|The cost for the print set up is going to be a lot higher than that of simple spot colour designs and is only good for the bigger print runs of 100+. When the garment screen printers make full coloured images and put them on coloured fabrics this is called ‘Simulated process’.|When garment screen printers reproduce such full colour images onto coloured fabrics a method called ‘Simulated Process’ is used. The print set-up costs are higher than that of simple spot colour designs and as such only suitable for larger print runs of 100+|This type of printing is only right for use in print runs of one hundred or more. This is because it simply costs more to set it up. A process called “Simulated Process” is used in cases where garment screen printers copy full colour pictures using coloured cloths.|’Simulated Process’ is a method used to reproduce full colour images onto colour fabrics. The costs associated with setting up the print are greater than those of simple spot colour designs. Therefore, they are only useful for larger print runs numbering more than 100.} The artwork is separated into various colours and shades using a method similar to spot colour, as used by a t-shirt printer, to achieve the overall look and feel of the original image.
This method is used by every printer and is very popular for reproducing heavy metal and fantasy images taken from CD artwork and reproduced on black t-shirts for band merchandising. This is the most expensive form for a t-shirt printer and as such used only on larger print runs due to the higher set up costs involving the colour separations and larger number of colours used to print the images.