For those new to the world of t-shirt designs here is a quick and simple mini-tutorial that should help you create a working design using the GNU Image Manipulation Program otherwise known as The Gimp. It is free and available for download from here.
I’ve tried to make this as simple as possible with only the absolute necessary steps, and as such it does assume some basic understanding of how to use the program, such as knowing where the menus are and how to use the tools. There are plenty of things you can do differently, but since I’m new to using the program I probably don’t know about all of them yet. This tutorial will probably be updated as I learn more about the program.
1. Create a new image, make everything in the new image dialogue look like this:
2. Paste the image into the document. Remove any bits you don’t want on the shirt… and make sure it has a checkered background, which indicates transparency. It’s best to merge all visible layers before exporting. If you have multiple transparent layers they’ll all merge nicely, but don’t flatten the image, because that would eliminate the transparency. Ideally you’ll want to end up with a single transparent layer before exporting.
3. Save as a PNG by typing the name you want as the filename. Then click the little plus sign down the bottom where it says “Select File Type (By Extension)” and then choose PNG from the list of filetypes.
Once you do that the PNG export box will pop up, make it look like this:
And that’s it. Pretty simple actually. Once uploaded, the resulting shirt should look something like this:
So there you go. If you stick to these steps, it should work fine – although if it doesn’t, please let me know by leaving a comment here.
joan warburton
If you want the image to cover more of the shirt what size would you use? Do you happen to know the total size of the area we have to work with?
Paul McClintock in reply to joan warburton’s comment
In the second image, the dotted line represents the entire printable area. It is 2400 pixels wide and 3200 pixels tall. Notice how the bull only takes up a small portion of this area? This is because I have shrunk my picture down to be smaller than it was initially. If you want your image to take up more of the shirt then all you need is to keep your image larger than my bull, the entire file however should always stay the same size.
If you have a image and it’s starting resolution is too small to take up the whole printable area, I wouldn’t recommend stretching it to fit because that would degrade the quality of the image. It may well end up taking up more space on the printed shirt, but it will be blurry and yuck.
Paul McClintock in reply to Paul McClintock’s comment
I should point out that the diagram here is not actual size I’ve brought it down to diagram size in order to show it on screen here. When zoomed in to 100% in GIMP the image would be larger than your monitor.
joan warburton
Thanks so much for all of the infomation Paul.
Deb Milligan
thankyou thankyou thankyou thankyou
i was thinking of asking you one day … :)