Digital Printing: An Overview

This article is out of date. We have a revised, more comprehensive article that can be found here: Direct to Garment Printing

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Digital Printing is a process we use to print your t-shirt order.

Basics

Digital Printing is new to the custom-printing scene. Digital printers are somewhat like computer printers, but significantly larger and more complex. They press the ink into your shirt so that it comes across more like part of the fabric. The number of colors in your design does not affect the price of a digital print (unlike in screen printing). If you're getting digital prints, select "Full Color." We use this process on small orders or on orders that feature full color images/photos.

Cost

Digital Printers, while new and exciting in the arena of custom-printing, are still very expensive and slow compared to screen printing. With screen printing, once the stencil is made the shirts can be made with that print as quickly as the machine can be pressed. Because it takes a long time to create the stencil for this process, digital printing is preferable for smaller orders. Digital printers are still very expensive, ranging in price from $11,000 to over $200,000. As technology continues to improve, perhaps prices will go down and digital printing will completely overtake screen printing. Only time will tell.