A print-ready DTF sheet is a file at the exact size of the sheet, with a transparent background, at 300 DPI, with your designs the right way round and 5 mm of space between them. Here is how to prepare it in any software, and the checks to make before sending.
1. Create a document at the exact size
New document at the dimensions of the sheet ordered, in millimetres, at 300 DPI: 29 × 21 cm (290 × 210), 29 × 42 cm (290 × 420), 58 × 42 cm (580 × 420) or 58 × 100 cm (580 × 1 000). No margin, no bleed, no trim marks: the DTF sheet is cut between the designs, not at the edge of the page. In Photoshop or Affinity, choose a transparent background; in Illustrator or Inkscape, simply leave the artboard empty.
2. Place your artwork at its actual size
Each design must be placed at the size at which it will be pressed: 8 cm for a chest logo, 25 to 30 cm for a back. This is the time to check the resolution: a logo 900 pixels wide cannot exceed 7,5 cm without becoming blurry. Arrange the designs in rows and columns, with at least 5 mm between each and 5 mm from the edges, for cutting with scissors or a guillotine. Our guidelines: 66 logos of 8 cm, 32 logos of 12 cm, 6 A4 or 3 A3 (turned a quarter turn) on one metre.
3. Do not mirror it
Send the sheet as it should appear on the garment. Mirroring is applied by our RIP at printing. A sheet sent already mirrored would be printed backwards.
4. Watch out for whites and transparency
On a DTF film, anything white is printed in opaque white, and anything transparent is not printed. Check on a dark background that no white or almost-white rectangle is left behind a cut-out logo, and that the areas you want transparent really are (no white at 1 % opacity). Very soft drop shadows and gradients to transparency give ragged edges when cutting: prefer sharp outlines, or add a light 1 mm white outline to the design.
5. Export
- Vector (Illustrator, Inkscape, Affinity Designer): PDF, fonts outlined or embedded, no background, at the sheet size.
- Raster (Photoshop, GIMP, Affinity Photo, Canva Pro): 24-bit PNG with transparency, 300 DPI, pixel size equal to the sheet (A3: 3 508 × 4 961; 58 × 100: 6 850 × 11 811).
- No JPG (no transparency), no SVG or AI directly: export them as PDF.
6. Check before sending
The designer reads the size of your file and compares it with the size ordered: a difference of more than 2 % is rejected, with the expected dimensions shown. It also calculates the effective resolution and warns you below 150 DPI. If everything is green, the sheet goes to print within 2 working days.
Only have separate designs and no layout software? On all our sizes, from A4 to the 58 × 100 cm metre, the layout is done online: you upload your files, the tool composes the sheet to scale.