Questions, including the awkward ones

A PNG with a transparent background, at 300 DPI at the size it will print. That covers ninety percent of orders. We also take PDF, TIFF and SVG. We do not take JPG, because a JPG cannot have a transparent background and the white box it brings along would print.

If a design will print 10 inches wide, the file needs to be at least 3,000 pixels wide. A 1,200-pixel logo pulled off a website will print 4 inches wide cleanly and 10 inches wide as a soft blur, and no amount of pressing fixes soft. When you upload we read the pixel size and tell you what width it supports.

No. Send it the way it should read on the garment. Mirroring happens in our print software. If you mirror it as well, it prints backwards, and we will usually catch that, but not always.

A quarter inch, minimum. Less than that and the pieces are hard to cut apart without nicking a neighbour. Keep half an inch from the edge of the sheet. No bleed, no crop marks, no registration marks: the film is cut around each piece, not to a trim line.

Strokes hold reliably at 0.5 pt and above; below that they print but they will not survive pressing and washing. Text reads at 6 pt in a clean sans and about 8 pt in a serif with fine hairlines. Very fine detail in white on a dark shirt is the hardest case, because the underbase and the colour have to agree exactly. It works; just do not build a whole design out of it.

Anything partly transparent gets a partial white underbase, which on a dark garment reads as a pale halo. Soft shadows and outer glows that fade to nothing look milky. Either make them fully opaque with a hard edge, or design them out. Gradients that stay opaque are fine and print beautifully.

Matte, after the second press. Straight off the first press it has a slight sheen; the second press with parchment takes that down and pushes the ink into the weave. The hand is soft on cotton and softer after the first wash. It does not have the rubbery raised feel some people associate with transfers, and if you have been avoiding DTF because of that feel, this is the thing to test.

Close. Not identical, and nobody honest will tell you identical, because your screen makes light and a shirt reflects it. Work in sRGB. Avoid colours that only exist as light: electric blue, neon green, hot magenta all come back a step calmer on fabric. If a brand colour has to be right, order one transfer by size, press it on the actual garment, and look at it in daylight. That costs a couple of dollars and a day, and it is how the studios that use us do it.

Yes. A white underbase is printed automatically under every design and it is opaque on black cotton, on navy fleece, on charcoal heather. You do not have to do anything to the file. If you want an area to show the shirt colour through, make it transparent, not white.

No. White in the artwork prints as white ink. Transparent in the artwork prints as nothing. That is the only rule.

Pressed to spec, fifty-plus washes without cracking, peeling or noticeable fade. Wash inside out, cold or warm, tumble low or hang. Do not iron directly on the print, do not bleach, do not dry-clean. Most failures we see trace back to the press: too cool, too short, or peeled hot.

300–315 °F, 12–15 seconds, medium-firm pressure. Let it cool fully, peel low and steady. Then cover with parchment or a Teflon sheet and press again for 5–8 seconds. Pre-press the blank garment for 5 seconds first to flatten it and drive out moisture, especially on cotton and on anything that has been sitting folded.

Cold. Cool to the touch, which on a busy floor is about thirty seconds. Peeling hot lifts the edges and leaves the surface glossy. If you are used to hot-peel film from another supplier, this is the one habit to change.

All fine. For 100% polyester and anything with a lot of elastane, drop to 270–285 °F and lengthen to 15–20 seconds to avoid scorch marks and dye migration. Use a pressing pillow on seams and zips. Tri-blends and 50/50s take the standard settings.

You can get a transfer down with a household iron, on a hard surface, with a lot of body weight and patience, and it will look decent. It will not last like a pressed one, because an iron cannot hold even pressure across a 10-inch print. For anything you are selling, use a press.

Almost always one of three things: peeled while still warm, pressure too light so the edges never bonded, or the garment was not pre-pressed and moisture got trapped. Re-press the piece with parchment at the standard settings and it will usually re-bond. Then adjust for the next run. If a whole batch lifts and the settings were right, tell us; that is ours to fix.

Schaumburg, Illinois, by ground. Orders placed on a business day print that day. Chicago, the rest of Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan are typically one to two business days after that; Ohio and the near Midwest two; the rest of the country three to five. The full table.

Free over $50. $4.90 flat below that. No expedited option at checkout yet; email for a real carrier quote if a date is fixed.

No. We are a print floor without a counter. By the time you had parked, the sheet would have been in a truck for an hour.

No. One transfer is an order.

Because the roll is 22 inches wide and the only thing that changes is how far it unrolls. $0.40 per linear inch: a 12-inch sheet is $4.80, a 60-inch sheet is $24, a 120-inch sheet is $48. You can do the sum in your head, which is the point. It is the same number whether you uploaded the sheet or built it here.

Before it prints, yes, and printing happens fast, so email the moment you notice. Once a sheet has gone through the press it is yours: custom-printed goods cannot be cancelled or returned for a change of mind. If the print is at fault, that is a different story; see the refund and reprint policy.

Yes, with a valid resale certificate. Submit it here and we set your account so tax drops off at checkout.

Almost. Not trademarks and characters you do not have the rights to, not hate, not anything we would be embarrassed to have on the press. The artwork policy is short and specific.