How to make light pencil drawing ready for silkscreen printing

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
December 12, 2020
2 replies
549 views

Hello. I a PS novice who tried doing this on my own but just made my son's drawing look horridSo any advice (or a link o a video) on what steps I should take to prepare a light pencil sketch for printing on a t-shirt would be appreciated. I understnd that this might require thickening lines and increasing my art's contrast. I would also like to know the most efficent and effective way to knock out the drawing's backgound. I working in photoshop CS 13.0 x64. Thank you!

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Chuck Uebele

Community Expert

How is this being printed: silkscreen or digital printer (thermal transfer)?

D

defaultbfv7md4xfbb9Author

Participant

You are asking a very good question. In my pirinter correspondence this never came up... how come I'm thinking that silkscreen is better than digital (I'm so analog)? Thoughts on which will produce a better, long lasting outcome?

Chuck Uebele

Community Expert

Silkscreen will produce a more durable product. Digital will allow for more subtle tones.

c.pfaffenbichler

Community Expert

Please post (a part of) the image in question.

What exactly do you mean by »knock out the drawing's backgound«?

Are you intending to print with only one color?

D

defaultbfv7md4xfbb9Author

Participant

As you can see the backgound is a dingy yellow that I need to knock out or turn to white so I can hand over printer-ready line art. In addition to holding or possible thickening the light pencil lines, I like to keep the creature's names which look pretty fragile and I don't want to lose the hand drawn style. (thought on this?) Yes, I want to print this in one color, orange, on a lime green sweatshirt. I understand that this will require a white underprinting to get the ink to pop. Thanks for any advice!

Chuck Uebele

Community Expert

I would duplicate the red channel and use curves or levels to increase the contrast of the pencil lines. If you're going to go with silkscreen, I would add a threshold adjustment layer to get just black and white. That might require you to make a couple levels adjustments and mask weak areas so they don't get lost with the threshold adjustment.

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