Garment Printer Owners

When printing an imported artwork image instead of the one you make, sometimes the artwork may not be printed clearly as you expected. Yes, in that case, you should put forth an extra effort and check the following items. This is for a beautiful finish. Make your customer happy with your skills.

Is it CMYK data?

Most designers take into account the amount of CMYK ink when they design in digital printing. That's because there are no bright and fluorescent (RGB lights) colors in printing (CMYK ink) color space. Mixing inks and paints turns the color gray and dirty. CMYK mixing, just like painting with watercolors is intuitively understandable. And long history of PostScript printers and RIP (raster image processor) software/hardware, professional designers are used to make data in CMYK. They all understand that the color gamut (color range) which is based on the supposition that "there is no such bright colors", in order to avoid an unexpected turn out. But you always make images on PC monitor, which is in RGB color space. If you use photos or scanned data, they are in RGB color space, too.

When we first designed this printer, we had an idea that RGB color space in making image data is more natural for users who use PC in the office, filing photos taken by their personal digital cameras, or drawing artwork on PC, printing business documents. Therefore, the color definition of the input side, called "input profile" for GT-541 is correspondent to sRGB. As this is default for Windows�, most users do not have to worry about the settings. That's why GT-541 is RGB (sRGB) printer.

But because of our choise, CMYK color troubles are unavoidable. Refer to TIPS of Color Matching and If CMYK page to understand what's happening.

Color matching failure produces unexpected colors, dark and dull and grayish. In order to avoid such an invisible tragedy, make sure to convert the data to RGB color mode (color space) with input profile sRGB. It is easy, if you use Photoshop, change mode from CMYK to RGB and confirm the color working space and do the settings of the color management dialog. If CorelDRAW, pay attention to the color palettes. Use default RGB color palette or our GT-541_Colors.cpl. Those countermeasures depends on each application. Go to the page of each application and find out the way to change artwork in RGB, the best print.

Also refer to each application's manual for instructions. When all the settings are correctly done, the black color (R=G=B="0" with sRGB input profile) will be our expected "black".

The size is too small? The resolution is too low

Particularly in cases of photos, the image often becomes rough when printed, although there seems to be no troubles on the PC monitor. If the image is vector data which is handled by Illustrator or CorelDRAW, make sure to enlarge the data to the size you want. In the meantime, don't forget to set the paper size that equals to the platen size of GT-541. Go to Artwork Size & Resolution right now and fine the way with the page Edit photos.

The image is too dark? Or too pale?

Since the image is for a T-shirt, dark original image will give the T-shirt a sad image. You've got to remember that too much impact on the T-shirt is just about right. If you can use Photoshop or Corel Photo-Paint, adjust the colors by using tools like Tone Curve, Brightness/Contrast/Intensity, and find colors you want. Printer Driver also has a function to slightly sharpen the contrast. See also Tour to Printer Driver, which will give you a lot of hint.

It is a scanned image.

If you scan the paper image, there may be a lot of noisy scratches, lines, dull colors and edges, and so forth. Use the scanner-attached application or Photoshop, Corel Photo-Paint, etc. to retouch the image. If retouch is perfect, the T-shirt artwork will be perfect.

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