Five Easy Steps to get Artwork in Illustrator ready for Screen Printing

How to Prepare Your Artwork for Screen Printing in Adobe Illustrator

Getting your file print ready before sending it to your screen printer is easy, here's five steps to make sure you're good to go

If you're using Adobe Illustrator and preparing artwork for screen printing, these are five steps that turn a great-looking design into a file that's actually what your screen printer needs to get your artwork on press.

Why Screen Printing Has Different File Requirements

Screen printing isn't like sending something to a desktop printer. Each colour in your design gets its own screen, and that screen is made by exposing your artwork onto a light-sensitive mesh. The printer needs to be able to separate every colour in your file clearly and precisely.

If your artwork has hidden layers, stacked overlapping shapes, unresolved transparencies, or colours that aren't defined correctly the separation process breaks down. You can end up with files that can't be output cleanly or prints that don't look the way you intended.

Getting the file right before sending to your screen printer is easy to do and helps make sure what ends up on the garment is what you designed.

1 ★ Set Your Colours as Spot Colours

This is one of the most important steps and one that's most often missed.

Screen printing uses specific physical inks not the theoretical blends your monitor produces. Each colour you want to print needs to be defined as a spot colour in your swatches panel. A spot colour tells the printer exactly which ink to mix and which screen to assign that colour to.

To set a spot colour in Illustrator, open the Swatches panel (Window > Swatches) and double-click on the colour you want to change. In the Swatch Options dialog, change the Color Type dropdown from Process Color to Spot Color. You'll see a small dot appear in the corner of the swatch to confirm it's now a spot colour.

If you're working from a Pantone reference, you can add Pantone swatches by going to Window > Swatches > Swatch Libraries > Color Books > Pantone Solid Coated. Find the Pantone you want and add it to your swatches, you'll find that these should come in as spot colours automatically.

Every colour in your artwork should be assigned to a named spot colour swatch. If you open your Separations Preview (under Window > Separations Preview) you should be able to toggle each colour on and off and see exactly what will be on each screen. If something unexpected shows up such as a stray grey or an outline in a slightly different shade now's the time to fix it to make sure you're not paying for an extra colour in your print that you didn't need.

The number of spot colours in your file will directly determine the cost of your print so it's worth making sure you haven't accidentally introduced extra colours before sending to your printers.

2 ★ Convert All Text to Outlines

Fonts are the most common cause of file problems. If you send a file with live text and the printer doesn't have that font installed on their system Illustrator will substitute a default font and your design changes.

Luckily the solution is simple, simply convert all your text to outlines before you send the file.

Select all your text (you can use Edit > Select All, or hold Shift and click each text element) then go to Type > Create Outlines. This converts every letter from an editable font into a vector shape. Your screen printer no longer needs the font on their system too because the type is now just paths.

Before you do this it's worth saving a backup copy of your file with the live text intact. Once text is outlined you can't edit it so if you spot a typo later you'll want to go back to your original.

A quick way to check for any remaining live text is to go to Edit > Find/Replace or use the Layers panel to look for any items with the text icon. Alternatively try Select > Object > Text Objects and if nothing is selected you're good to go.

3 ★ Make Sure Your Artwork Is at the Correct Print Size

This one sounds too obvious but it's so often overlooked. The artwork in your file should be the exact size you want it to print on the garment and if you don't know where to start with this just ask your printer for recom­men­dations.

Standard front chest print sizes are roughly 25–30cm wide for adults.

A left chest logo is typically around 8–10cm wide.

Back prints can go up to around 36cm wide for a larger print depending on the garment but it's always worth checking with your printer if you're not sure what's appropriate for your design and the garment you're printing on. At Live Ink we're always happy to advise on this before you finalise your file.

An easy way to keep print size in check is to set your artboard size to match your print area. You can do this in File > Document Setup or by using the Artboard Tool(Shift+O). The artwork should sit within that artboard at the size it will actually print.

4 ★ Flatten and Clean Up Your Paths

This is where a lot of files have hidden problems. Illustrators build up artwork in layers, often with overlapping shapes stacked on top of each other. Some of those shapes might be partially hidden, clipped, or sitting behind other elements. From the outside the design looks clean but underneath things can get messy.

For screen printing the most reliable files are those where the artwork is genuinely flat. This means  just the paths that make up the visible design and although your screen printer can sort this out for you it's best practice to clean up the artwork yourself so you know exactly what to expect when it gets printed onto a shirt. Same goes here as it did for converting text to outlines, keep a backup  before any merging so that it's easy to make edits if needed.

Merge overlapping shapes. Use the Pathfinder panel (Window > Pathfinder) to combine shapes that overlap.

The Unite function merges selected objects into a single compound shape.

The Minus Front function subtracts the front shape from the one behind which  useful when you want a white element to knock out of a darker colour underneath. Work through your design colour by colour and use Pathfinder to simplify wherever possible.

Check for and remove stray points and paths. Go to Object > Path > Clean Up and tick all the options. This removes stray points, empty text objects, and unpainted objects that might be lurking in the file invisibly.

Deal with clipping masks. If you've used clipping masks to crop artwork, consider whether you can expand and simplify them. Select the masked group and go to Object > Expand or Object > Clipping Mask > Release, then delete any parts you don't need and re-merge the paths. Clipping masks can sometimes cause issues during film output, so the cleaner the paths the better.

Check your layers. Open the Layers panel (Window > Layers) and look at everything that's in the file. Anything that's hidden but still in the file can cause confusion. Delete any layers or objects you don't need and make sure every visible element is something you want to see in the print.

Ideally, by the end of this process each colour in your design should be on its own layer and every path within that layer should be a simple merged shape.

5 ★ Expand Appearances and Effects

If you've used any live Illustrator effects such as drop shadows, blurs, glows, transforms or warps  these are not part of the actual vector paths. They exist as instructions that Illustrator applies at display time. 

Go to Object > Expand Appearance to convert any live effects into actual paths. Do this for every object that has an appearance applied to it. Then follow up with Object > Expand to make sure strokes and fills are fully resolved.

After expanding, go back through your Pathfinder work if needed as expanding effects can sometimes introduce unexpected shapes that need cleaning up.

Now Check Your File One Final Time

Before you send anything, run through this checklist:

• All colours are spot colours and visible in Separations Preview as separate channels
• No stray CMYK or RGB colours in the swatches 
• All text is converted to outlines
• Artwork is at the correct print size on a correctly sized artboard
• Paths are merged and the file is flat with no hidden shapes lurking underneath
• Live effects have been expanded
• Overprint Preview has been checked and everything looks correct
• Unused swatches, layers, and objects have been deleted
• The file is saved as an AI file (with PDF compatibility turned on) or exported as a PDF — either works well for screen printing

Send the file as a PDF if you're not sure, with Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities ticked. This gives your screen printer a clean self-contained file that doesn't depend on any linked assets.

A Few Extra Things Worth Knowing

Minimum stroke weights. Very thin strokes can be difficult to hold on a screen. As a general guide, keep strokes above 0.5pt for standard prints. Finer detail is possible but worth discussing with your screen printer in advance.

Halftones and gradients. Gradients are not as straightforward in screen printing as a digital print  and often need to be tweaked in the design to achieve the smoothest look in the print. If you want a gradient effect it can differ from printer to printer how they achieve this look for you so it can help to talk to your printer about how they want the artwork set up for this before you submit your design.

White ink. If you're printing on a dark garment and need white as a visible colour it needs to be set up as its own spot colour in the file and clearly labelled as white so there is no confusion when it comes to printing. A bright magenta pink is often used as a colour to indicate white to printers but this can vary and always needs to be labelled as white.

Send Us Your File and We'll Check It

At Live Ink we print on GOTS-certified organic cotton garments with water-based inks and we work with bands, brands and businesses who care about what they're putting their name on. We check every file that comes in before it goes to press and we'll let you know if anything needs adjusting.

If you're not sure about your artwork, send it over and we'll take a look. We'd rather help you get it right at this stage than have problems show up on press day.

Get in touch with the team here.

Preparing a brand new design from scratch? Read our post on why your first t-shirt design should be one colour — it's worth a look before you finalise what you're sending us.