How to prepare designs for fabric printing? What do you need to know?

When preparing a design for printing on fabric, there are several important factors to consider to ensure that the final product meets your expectations. These include:

Colors and color space

Choose the right color palette and make sure that the colors in your design are vibrant and accurate. It is important to consider how the colors will look on the final fabric and how they will interact with one another.

The color space that is used for fabric printing depends on the specific requirements of the project and the capabilities of the printing equipment being used.

sRGB (Standard RGB) is a widely used color space that is optimized for on-screen display and is suitable for most web-based applications. It has a smaller color gamut than Adobe RGB, which means that it can represent a limited range of colors.

Adobe RGB is a larger color space that provides a wider gamut of colors and is suitable for professional printing applications. When it comes to fabric printing, Adobe RGB is generally preferred as it offers a wider range of colors and can produce more accurate and vibrant color results.

In summary, we recommended to use Adobe RGB. If you can't use this color space, don't worry, our digital printers print from any color spaces with the best results.

File resolution

Make sure that your design has a good resolution, as low-resolution designs can result in blurry or pixelated prints. A resolution of at least 150 DPI (dots per inch) is recommended for fabric printing.

If you are uploading lower resolution files, don't worry, our online fabric editor will show you the possible size with good printing quality.

Size and scale

Determine the size and scale of your design, taking into account the dimensions of the fabric that you will be printing on. Make sure that your design fits within the printing area and that it is not too small or too large.

Repeat pattern

If your design includes a repeating pattern, make sure that it is seamless and that the repeats align correctly. Consider the repeat size, direction, and orientation when creating your design.

To get a good result, repeat options are necessary so that the design does not have an edge.
For repeat designs, please make sure that the files repeat seamlessly in each direction and do not have white line artefacts along the seamline.

Not seamless repeat

White line artefacts

All good

File format

Choose a file format that is compatible with the printing process, such as JPG, PNG or TIFF (flattened).

Summary

At MUZE we recommend preparing your designs in the Adobe RGB color space with a resolution of 150 dpi.