Apparel decoration glossary: 42 print shop terms explained

A

Artwork approval: The customer's recorded agreement to a specific proof, with a timestamp. If it lives in a text message, you do not have one. See also: Proof / mockup

B

Backing (stabiliser): Material hooped behind the fabric so stitches do not pull the garment out of shape. Cut-away for knits, tear-away for stable wovens. The wrong backing shows up as a puckered logo after the first wash.
Blanks: Undecorated garments bought in for a job. Your biggest single cost line and the one most exposed to supplier stockouts, so quote from live supplier stock wherever you can. See also: Ring-spun vs open-end

C

Combed cotton: Cotton with short fibres combed out before spinning. Smoother surface, fewer stray fibres poking through a print, and a noticeably better DTG result. See also: Ring-spun vs open-end
Cure: Bringing ink to the temperature it needs, for the time it needs, so it bonds permanently. Under-cured prints crack or wash out. Test with a stretch and a wash, not by eye. See also: Wash test

D

Digitising: Converting artwork into an embroidery machine file with stitch types, directions, densities and a sew sequence. It is a craft, not a file conversion, and it is a one-off charge you should pass on. See also: Stitch count
Discharge ink: Ink that removes the garment dye and replaces it with pigment, so the print sits in the fabric rather than on it. Very soft hand, but results vary by garment dye, so always test the actual blank. See also: Hand
DPI vs LPI: DPI is the resolution of the file or the output device. LPI is the frequency of the halftone pattern you generate from it. A 300 DPI file can carry a 45 LPI halftone comfortably; the two numbers are not interchangeable. See also: LPI (lines per inch)
DTF (direct to film): The design is printed onto a film, powdered with adhesive, cured, then heat-pressed onto the garment. Works on fabrics DTG struggles with, and multiple designs gang onto one sheet, so sheet utilisation drives your cost. See also: Gang sheet
DTG (direct to garment): Inkjet printing straight onto fabric. No screens, so no setup cost and unlimited colours, which makes it the right tool for one-offs and photographic art. Cost per print is roughly flat, so it loses to screen print at volume. See also: Pretreat, Screen printing

F

Flash cure: A short burst of heat mid-print that gels an ink layer enough to print the next one on top of it. Not a full cure; the garment still needs the dryer.
Four colour process (CMYK): Reproducing full-colour images from four process inks and halftones. Fewer screens than a big spot-colour build, but far less forgiving on registration and exposure. See also: Halftone, Registration

G

Gang sheet: One DTF film carrying many designs nested together to minimise waste. Cost the job by the area used, not by the design count, or small jobs subsidise large ones. See also: DTF (direct to film), Nesting
GSM: Grams per square metre: fabric weight. Around 150 gsm is a lightweight tee, 180 to 200 is a mid-weight, 220 and up is heavyweight. Heavier fabric needs more ink and more cure time.

H

Halftone: A pattern of dots that simulates a continuous tone using one solid ink. Dot size varies, ink colour does not. The dot frequency is the LPI and it must be matched to your mesh. See also: LPI (lines per inch), Mesh count
Hand: How much you can feel a print when you touch it. Soft hand is achieved with high mesh, thin deposits and water-based or discharge inks. See also: Discharge ink
HTV (heat transfer vinyl): Coloured vinyl cut to shape, weeded, and pressed. Ideal for names and numbers in ones and twos. Weeding time, not press time, is what costs you on detailed designs. See also: Weeding

L

LPI (lines per inch): The frequency of a halftone screen. Higher LPI gives finer detail but needs a higher mesh count and cleaner exposure. Getting LPI and mesh out of step is the most common cause of lost highlight dots. See also: Mesh count, Halftone

M

Mesh count: Threads per inch in a screen. Low mesh lays down more ink (good for underbase on heavy fabric), high mesh lays down less and holds finer detail. Pick mesh from the artwork and the ink, not from habit. See also: Underbase, LPI (lines per inch)
MOQ (minimum order quantity): The smallest order you will accept for a given method. Its real job is to keep setup-heavy methods from running at a loss, not to turn work away. See also: Setup charge

N

Nesting: Arranging designs on a sheet so the unused area is as small as possible. A few percent of utilisation is the whole margin on transfer work. See also: Gang sheet

P

Pantone / PMS: A standard colour reference system. Quote Pantone matching as a chargeable option: mixing to a reference and proving it takes ink and time. See also: Spot colour
Plastisol: The standard PVC-based screen ink. Forgiving, opaque, sits on top of the fabric, will not dry in the screen. Heavier hand than water-based. See also: Hand
Press schedule: The planned order of jobs on each press. Sequencing by ink colour and screen reuse rather than by due date alone can remove hours of changeover from a week.
Pretreat: A liquid applied to a garment before DTG so the white ink sits on the surface instead of soaking in. Under-applied pretreat gives a dull, patchy white; over-applied leaves a visible box around the print. See also: DTG (direct to garment)
Proof / mockup: A visual of the finished garment sent to the customer for sign-off before production. The single cheapest way to avoid a reprint argument, provided the approval is recorded. See also: Artwork approval
Puckering: Fabric gathering around stitches, usually from too much density, the wrong backing, or a badly hooped garment. Almost always a setup fault rather than a machine fault. See also: Backing (stabiliser)

Q

Quantity break: A price tier where the unit price drops because the fixed setup is spread over more units. Your break points should follow your real setup cost, not round numbers. See also: Setup charge, MOQ (minimum order quantity)

R

Registration: How accurately each colour lines up with the others. Out of registration shows as coloured fringes at edges. Trapping and choking in separations buy you tolerance. See also: Trapping
Ring-spun vs open-end: Two ways of spinning cotton yarn. Ring-spun is finer, softer and prints cleaner; open-end is coarser and cheaper. It is the main reason two "100% cotton" tees feel nothing alike. See also: Blanks, GSM

S

Screen printing: Ink pushed through a stencilled mesh screen, one screen per colour. Cheapest per unit at volume because the setup cost is fixed and the run cost is tiny. Wrong choice for one-offs and full-colour photographs. See also: Setup charge, DTG (direct to garment)
Separations: Splitting artwork into one file per screen, with halftones, trapping and an underbase where needed. Where most screen print jobs are actually won or lost. See also: Underbase, Halftone
Setup charge: A fixed fee that covers screen making, separations, digitising or press setup. Charge it explicitly. Hiding it in the unit price makes small runs look unprofitable and large runs look overpriced. See also: Quantity break
Simulated process: Full-colour imagery built from spot inks and halftones rather than CMYK. More screens, more control, better results on dark garments than process. See also: Four colour process (CMYK)
Spot colour: A specific pre-mixed ink, usually specified as a Pantone reference, printed from its own screen. Predictable and repeatable, which matters for brand work. See also: Pantone / PMS, Four colour process (CMYK)
Stitch count: The number of stitches in an embroidery design, and the only honest basis for embroidery pricing. Machine time is close to linear in stitch count, so price per thousand stitches per position. See also: Digitising
Sublimation: Dye turned to gas by heat and bonded into polyester fibres. The print has no hand at all because there is no ink layer on top. Only works on polyester or poly-coated substrates, and only pale ones.

T

Trapping: Slightly overlapping adjacent colours in separations so a small registration error does not leave a gap of bare garment. See also: Registration

U

Underbase: A layer of white ink printed first on a dark garment so the colours above it read true instead of sinking into the fabric. Adds a screen, a flash and a pass, so it belongs in the price, not in your goodwill. See also: Flash cure, Screen printing

W

Wash test: Washing a sample print several times to confirm the cure. The cheapest quality control you can run and the one that prevents a whole-order reprint. See also: Cure
Weeding: Removing the vinyl you do not want from around a cut design. Pure labour, scales badly with fine detail, and is the line item shops most often forget to charge for. See also: HTV (heat transfer vinyl)
WIP (work in progress): Jobs started but not finished. High WIP looks like a busy shop and behaves like a slow one: everything is half-done and nothing ships. Cap it deliberately.

Decoration terms, defined

A

B

C

D

F

G

H

L

M

N

P

Q

R

S

T

U

W