Film

The first step in the process of garment screenprinting is creating the art. Images to be printed must be transferred to film, either by a stat camera or digital imagesetter. The film should be imaged in a positive format, (as opposed to offset which requires a negative) so that what is black on the film will print on the shirt with the desired ink. Films can also be created by cutting what as known as "rubylith". This transparent red film is scored with a razor and the areas that are not intended to print are stripped away. These three methods will create the most dense, and best suited artwork for the process. 'Films' can also be created by printing "vellum" (a lot like tracing paper) through a laser printer. This can be a tricky process and requires extra effort to get usable densities, but once optimized this process can be effective for simple work devoid of tight trapping or extensive small halftones. For you technocrats out there, screen printers want film positives, right reading, emulsion up.