What File Format Should I Send for Printing?
By The Velocity Wear Team
Send vector wherever you can: AI, EPS, SVG or a vector PDF, with all fonts converted to outlines. If you only have raster artwork, send a PNG with a transparent background at 300 dpi at the size it will actually print. Do not send JPEG, and do not send a logo pulled off a website or social media.
The Checklist
- Vector format: AI, EPS, SVG, or PDF saved with vector data intact rather than a flattened image.
- Fonts outlined or converted to curves, so the type cannot reflow or substitute on another machine.
- Transparent background on any raster file, which means PNG rather than JPEG.
- 300 dpi at final print size, not 300 dpi at thumbnail size. A 25cm print wants around 3000 pixels across.
- One file per print position, named clearly: front, back, left chest, sleeve.
Outline Your Fonts, Every Time
This causes more proof delays than any other single issue. When type is left live in a file, it depends on that font being installed on whatever machine opens it. If it is not, the software silently swaps in something else. Your carefully chosen condensed sans becomes a default serif, the line breaks change, and the proof you receive is not the design you made.
Outlining converts letters into shapes. They stop being text and become artwork, which is exactly what a printer needs. Keep an editable copy for yourself before you outline, because you cannot easily reverse it.
PDF Means Almost Nothing on Its Own
A PDF is a wrapper, not a quality standard. It can contain a perfect scalable vector logo or a 72 dpi screenshot someone dropped in from an email. Both open. Both look fine on screen. Only one is printable.
Quick test: open the PDF and zoom right in on a curved edge of the logo. If it stays razor sharp at 800%, it is vector. If it turns into pixels, it is a raster image in a PDF coat and it needs treating as raster artwork.
The 100% Zoom Check
Here is the habit that prevents most artwork problems, and almost nobody does it. Open your raster file and zoom to 100%. Then hold a ruler against the screen and find the physical width your print will actually be. If the edges look soft or the small text is mushy at that size, that is precisely what will be printed.
Files look excellent on a laptop mostly because they are being displayed at a third of their intended size. Print does not do you that favour. Ten seconds of zooming is the cheapest quality control available.
Colour Mode, and Why Your Hex Code Is Not a Print Colour
Screen colours are RGB, built from light. Print colours are made from ink, and for screen printing they are mixed to a Pantone reference. These are different systems and they do not map perfectly. A vivid RGB orange or a neon green can simply be outside what ink reproduces, particularly through digital methods that work in CMYK.
If you have Pantone references for your brand, send them alongside the artwork and specify solid coated. If you only have hex codes, send those and expect a close match rather than an exact one. Being told which matters more, the exact colour or the overall look, genuinely helps at proofing.
“"Every artwork problem is cheap on Monday and expensive on the Friday the order ships."”
What Not to Send
A logo lifted from a website is typically sized for a browser, so it is far too small for print. An image saved from social media has been through platform compression, which smears the edges in exactly the way a print exposes. A screenshot is a photograph of a screen and inherits every limitation of one.
Also avoid embedding artwork in Word documents, slide decks or spreadsheets. The image gets compressed and re-scaled on the way in, and what comes out is worse than the original you already had sitting in a folder somewhere.
By Method, Briefly
Screen printing and cut vinyl want vector, because colours must be separated cleanly or a blade must follow a path. DTF and DTG happily take a high-resolution transparent PNG, since they print full colour rather than separating it. Embroidery wants vector as a starting point but the real deliverable is a digitised stitch file created from it, so expect a conversation about simplifying fine detail and small text.
Sublimation needs artwork built to the garment panels at full size, which is a different job again and worth starting early.
Sending It
Package the files clearly. One folder, named files, a note saying which goes where and at what width, and the Pantone references if you have them. If you have laid the design out in the free Design Studio, say so, because seeing your intended placement removes a whole round of guesswork.
Clear files get proofed faster. That is the entire trick.