What are the best art files for your screen printer?

So you’re ready to place an order. You’ve figured out what type of garments you’d like, where you want your prints, and how many pieces.
Now the printer asks if you have “print ready” art files or if they will need to “vectorize” them for you.

You’re not even sure what “print ready” or “vector” means!

(If you are sure, great! Just saves us a little time in getting your order processed and back to you! ALSO saves you some money!)

Print ready is just a file that was built in a format the printer can use to process screens for your prints.
Vector is a type of file format, and file, built specifically so that no matter how large or small it’s made it will always remain sharp and detailed and will not pixelate into a poor quality image.
Sometimes a file may be saved in a “vector” format but may not actually be a vector file built in a vector program.

The file type preferred by your printer will also vary. That depends on the Vector program they use.
However, PDF, and EPS are usually universal.

Here at American Ink & Thread we prefer Ai files. Even more specifically we currently require CS5 versions to make sure we get exactly what you’re sending to open on our computer without issue.

Hope this little bit helps! If you ever have any questions about artwork please email us at info@americaninkandthread.com and we will fill you in!

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