>

By Timothy Walker


Whether you're in a panic because you need thirty-two copies of your presentation for tomorrow's board meeting (and your awesome personal assistant is off sick and naturally, she's the only one in the building that knows how to work the printer) or whether you need your fifteen company vehicles wrapped for the new re-branding function next month, never fear because your digital printing in Syracuse, NY specialists are near!

The technology is a new-ish process. It is where an image is printed directly from digital media onto a variety of surfaces like paper, metal or glass. In many instances, it has replaced the traditional method of offset prints.

One of the important checks that they will make will be the resulting color compared to the requested color (remember that digital doesn't have the same variety as a screen job would). Once everything has been checked and finalized, the file is sent through to the garment printer. In the meantime, the clothing itself needs to be prepared.

Printing on light colored fabrics is faster because dark color fabrics need to be treated with a base coat of white ink so that the colors will show up properly. Each piece of clothing should be steamed to remove any creases (which could be disastrous if discovered after the job has been completed!). After the item of clothing has gone through the process, sometimes needing about three layers of ink, it has to dry.

If you're looking for lots of detail, going it digitally is the ideal way to go. To get the high level of detail, ink will be applied thinner than that applied during screen job executions. The screen print process uses stencils and the ink is applied in separate layers with a new stencil for each color. It is also interesting to note that only four colors are used in the process! Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black can be combined to make any color you need.

When time is of the essence, this procedure beats the offset model hands down! There is less setup and maintenance needed with this approach and the method of offsetting has the added cost of the plates. Doing it digitally has another extremely handy benefit: it's far easier to create a sample of the finished product before running the whole batch - if errors are found, these can easily be corrected before continuing.

The vinyl can now put applied to your vehicle and is able to be adjusted until submitted to the correct pressure and heat. Because of the size of the printers, the vehicle wrap will consist of multiple pieces and this makes the application to the vehicle that much more efficient. You'll also need to make sure the vehicle is washed and dry before taking it in for the wrap as this will depend on how well the vinyl sticks to it.

When you're submitting your material for processing, you'll need to provide the image in a common file format: usually Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop (. Ai, . Eps, . Pdf or . Psd, . Eps, . Tiff and . Jpeg). Now, with the wealth of information you've just managed to acquire, it should be a walk in the park to find an expert at doing prints digitally in Syracuse, NY.




About the Author: