# Does this look like DTG printing to you?



## JayTeePup (Aug 9, 2016)

Hi guys, 

I'm not experienced in having t-shirts printed so bear with me. I recently contacted a popular t-shirt printing company to have some company t-shirts printed. I wanted around 20 done at first and the design has 6 (or 7?) colors. Speaking to someone at this company I was assured that DTG printing would give the best results, be the sharpest image, truest colors and the most cost effective for the number of shirts I wanted. Still, I was surprised at the cost (around $30/shirt) and wasn't 100% happy with their insistence that we had to use Fruit Of The Loom t-shirts (not exactly my favorite). The shirt color I wanted was "natural," which is an off-white sort of light cream color. The design is pretty simple - it's not photographic but does have a vibrant orange in it. I was assured by the guy on the phone that the design on the shirts would have a soft hand feel to it, i.e. totally smooth and with no texture. This was a big deciding factor in going with DTG for me, although admittedly I am quite naive when it comes to having shirts printed 

Anyway I got the shirts yesterday and am not happy with the results. Aside from the fact that a couple of the shirts have warped text on the back, and one of them has a white streak across the front design, the actual design feels very "rough hand" to me. It has a very noticeable thick, rough texture which to me feels like it's been screen printed. I don't know if you'll be able to tell from the photo whether or not this looks like DTG printing but here it is anyway - any thoughts?

http://imgur.com/a/luFR1

Bear in mind that this has a very rough, thick texture which is extremely noticeable, in comparison with the feel of the surrounding shirt. I had supposed that since this was a light colored t-shirt, there would be no feel to the ink. For a design of this nature, was I right to be talked into DTG printing or was it a waste of money? Especially given that the design doesn't feel like it's "part of the shirt" with no texture like I was promised. I basically paid $600 for 20 of these shirts, along with an extra $50 for a "rush order." Any advice would be very welcome. Thanks!

EDIT: don't know why the inserted link isn't formatted correctly above but I guess you can get there from the URL anyway. Sorry about that!


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## EricDeem (May 7, 2011)

Looks screen printed to me as I see some misregistration and on a white garment with a DTG printer that wouldn't happen.


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## JayTeePup (Aug 9, 2016)

Thanks for your reply EricDeem. Can you tell me where you see the misregistration? Are you sure you're not referring to the accents in the lighter orange (which are part of the design)? Or is it a more subtle thing you are referring to?


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## EricDeem (May 7, 2011)




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## JayTeePup (Aug 9, 2016)

Ah yes I see now, thanks. I think it's becoming more and more clear that these were screen printed.


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## EricDeem (May 7, 2011)

If you can feel the ink on a white shirt its almost a guarantee that its screen printed. With DTG you would be hard pressed to feel anything...tho if it was ran thru a dryer and not a heat press it will create a rougher feel but should still be less than a traditional screen printed shirt.


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## JayTeePup (Aug 9, 2016)

Would it make any difference if the t-shirt was not white but off-white? This is Fruit Of The Loom's "Natural" shade which has a very faint yellowing/cream to it.


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## EricDeem (May 7, 2011)

They definitely printed white ink so it would feel a little heavier even DTG printed but should still be nice and smooth.


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## EricDeem (May 7, 2011)

My esteemed colleague thinks it might actually be DTG just a bad job lol. He has MUCH more experience than I do with screen printing and issues associated to the process. If it is indeed DTG I wonder what machine it was printed on.


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## JayTeePup (Aug 9, 2016)

EricDeem said:


> My esteemed colleague thinks it might actually be DTG just a bad job lol. He has MUCH more experience than I do with screen printing and issues associated to the process. If it is indeed DTG I wonder what machine it was printed on.


I have no idea, the company was Rush Order Tees if that's helpful.


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

That looks like DTG to me. I have one DTG printer myself which loves to shift the white underbase print off by 1/150th of an inch from the color layer randomly. 

$30 for one shirt is beyond ridiculous but if you actually had it printed same day or next day, that's an acceptable price. I charge $10 and $30 for an identical print myself with the difference being how fast people need it by.

Rush Order Tees offers screen printing AND Direct to Garment. There is no way they're going to screen print a shirt that complex if you're ordering fewer than 12-24 shirts. How many did you order?


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## JayTeePup (Aug 9, 2016)

treefox2118 said:


> That looks like DTG to me. I have one DTG printer myself which loves to shift the white underbase print off by 1/150th of an inch from the color layer randomly.
> 
> $30 for one shirt is beyond ridiculous but if you actually had it printed same day or next day, that's an acceptable price. I charge $10 and $30 for an identical print myself with the difference being how fast people need it by.
> 
> Rush Order Tees offers screen printing AND Direct to Garment. There is no way they're going to screen print a shirt that complex if you're ordering fewer than 12-24 shirts. How many did you order?


I ordered a run of 20 shirts. They took 12 days to get here after OKing the proofs. And that was with a $50 "rush delivery" surcharge. 

What's also making me suspect that they were screen printed was that when I look at the email they sent me with the link to pay, I just noticed that it says "screen printing front and back," - you can see the price rundown here:

Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet

I guess I didn't notice this because I had been talking to the guy about DTG and that's how he assured me they would be done. Also, the proofs I approved said "DTG printing front and back" on them. When I said I was interested in DTG printing he assured me that they would look pin sharp and awesome and that there would be no "feel" to the design, it would feel as soft as the surrounding t-shirt. I wish you could feel it, it feels extremely rough and plasticy.


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## red514 (Jul 21, 2009)

from the picture, the offregistration could also be in a DTG print, it looks like the magenta channel is off. The gray looks great for DTG


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## SaintsDesigns (May 8, 2010)

This is definitely DTG.
It isnt a soft feel because it looks like a white underbase was used as its on an off white Tshirt.
Had it been on a white shirt and no underbase, after the pretreatment has been wash out it would be soft ... 
We use FOTL super premiums, we used FOTL heavy at first due price, but our customers hated them, they are much happier with the super premiums or AA.


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## EricDeem (May 7, 2011)

After looking at the image more and discussing a variety of features seen I must say I think I was wrong before and this is indeed a DTG print.


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

I agree that the magenta looks off, but I also wonder if the artwork was crappy "it looks fine on my smart phone screen" low resolution...

I think the print looks fine. From 2-3 feet away you're likely not going to see the same issues.

I have some one-time customers who complain about details you can only see up close under a microscope. In those situations, I just tell them to accept that it's a cotton media not coated paper stock, and if needed just refund their money and ban them from all of my businesses and ecommerce sites.

If the artwork is low resolution, you're going to have fringing on the edges as the pixelization is upconverted and smoothed somewhat by the RIP.

Was your artwork 300dpi at the actual image size, or a 100% vector image? Can you share a link to the actual artwork?


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## zhenjie (Aug 27, 2006)

It looks like their team decided it was the best interest to print a white underbase due to the off-white nature of the garment. The advantage is you get the white part of the design printed and the colours will pop a bit more. If you insist on no white underbase, the print would not have a hand or feel 9 (as desired), but the colours will be more muted compared to a white underbase print. I believe they use Kornit DTG machines so can easily print CYMK only.

I wouldn't call this a bad job, just a bit of miscommunication of expectations.


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## INKFREAK (Jul 24, 2008)

EricDeem said:


> Looks screen printed to me as I see some misregistration and on a white garment with a DTG printer that wouldn't happen.


Eric, that's not misregistration, it's bleed.


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## EricDeem (May 7, 2011)

INKFREAK said:


> Eric, that's not misregistration, it's bleed.


After a closer inspection and looking at the other variables within the print I definitely agree with you. My initial thoughts were off lol


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## JeridHill (Feb 8, 2006)

INKFREAK said:


> Eric, that's not misregistration, it's bleed.


I guess it's how technical you want to get. I'd say it's neither but misalignment of the head. It could be simply the platen is too far away. It could be an encoder issue. It could be a head alignment needs performed. And it could be electrical.... How far down the rabbit hole do we want to go?

The good thing, IMO, I believe it's minor and the end user would never see it unless a very close inspection.

As an FYI, the tone of my comments above is meant to be in jest and not malicious.


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## Goodguy96 (Aug 5, 2009)

I'm a ten year DTG printer and I say definetely DTG. You would have been charged set up fees if it was screen printed. The slight shadows pointed out earlier is the black ink bleeding into the colours. It can also be seen on the outline. The texture of the shirt visible in the print is also a dead giweaway. The colours would also be brighter. The person who told you there would be no hand probably thought the white underbase was not necessary for that shirt colour but, it was and that will have some feel to it.

Overall, the print looks good. Bright colours don't always translate well from computer screen to print. It is CMYK printing after all.


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## rklovestruck (May 1, 2015)

I say DTG because you can see the fibers / threads through the ink while most plastisol screen prints would create a different texture plus I doubt they charged you for 4-5 screen setups.


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## JayTeePup (Aug 9, 2016)

Thanks for all your answers guys. I've been dealing with some other issues with the shirts. 

To answer an earlier question, no the original artwork was not low resolution. It was all done in Illustrator so is 100% vector. I was basically misled by the guy who sold me the shirts. When I initially called them, the sales guy sold me on DTG printing on the basis that it would be cheaper for a short run, that the colors would match my artwork perfectly, and that the design would not have any kind of feel on the shirt. Being completely ignorant about DTG printing, I have to admit I was sold on that basis. The way he explained it was that the ink was going to be a part of the shirt and that it would be completely smooth when you ran your hand across it. He did not say anything about the feel being compromised by the amount of white ink which would have to be used. And he was looking at my design when I was on the phone to him. 

Next thing he told me was that if I wanted DTG printing, they would have to do it on Fruit Of The Loom HD shirts instead of the nice shirts I wanted. As you can imagine, they feel horrible, almost like wearing a sack. I don't want to give them to my employees, who are expecting nice lightweight, soft feel shirts for the hot weather. But that's not all. After putting them through a cold wash once, all of them turned inside out, some of them are showing obvious wear in the design already. The ink is basically coming off and looks like they would be done in 4 or 5 washes. Not only that but after wearing one of them for a couple of hours to see what it would feel like, the print on the back (an email address) was so warped when I took it off that it's wave shaped. They really are terrible shirts, lol! 

So naturally I complained, and the women who I spoke to sounded pretty disgusted with the way I was treated and basically admitted that the sales guy told me a bunch of unmitigated BS. I think she recognized that after paying over $600 for 20 shirts, I had a right to expect some quality product. And that's definitely not what I got. So in their defense, they are determined to make me happy and have said they're going to ship me some samples of alternatives to see which one I would be most happy with. They've written off the shirts they sent me, I don't have to send them back. At first I thought maybe they'd be good as backups but at this stage I just want to trash them. 

So it still remains to be seen if they'll come through with the goods. I'm hopeful. I'm not the kind of guy to get ripped off and write things off as experience, I always demand heads on plates. However it's still screwed my plans up a lot - we had planned to have a photo shoot with the new shirts for the new website this weekend just gone, and obviously that's going to have to be postponed.


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## heliosthreads (Feb 20, 2018)

From my experience, there is a wide range of quality for DTG printers. This work definitely looks like a DTG print because a screen print would not turn out like this. In addition, you mentioned that the print seems rough which is that of a lower end DTG printer. The only other way that this might be printed is using a water-based ink when screen printed but then it wouldn't be hard to the touch. 

Just my thoughts


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## MadeDesigns (Feb 19, 2013)

Looks like waterbase silk screen ink.

Or a washed inkjet light transfer?

The page said jet pro soft stretch so its inkjet light transfer.


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## NoXid (Apr 4, 2011)

MadeDesigns said:


> ...
> The page said jet pro soft stretch so its inkjet light transfer.


Nope. There is white ink printed as part of the image.

*EDIT: Never bleeping mind! This thread is from a year and a half ago. Don't think the TS cares now.*


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## espeinc (Aug 30, 2008)

NoXid said:


> Nope. There is white ink printed as part of the image.
> 
> *EDIT: Never bleeping mind! This thread is from a year and a half ago. Don't think the TS cares now.*


How did this thread got up to current? - well, never mind that now but....

$600 for 20 shirts?

Screen printed would have been best - although he may not have been too happy about the no feel issue as screen printed would have had a feel no matter what.

8 screens @ $ 25 ea (7 front + 1 back)
print ea shirt @ $ 7 ea front and back
price of shirt @ $ 3 ea
$400 total 

That was definitely done via DTG btw.


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