Why only Vector?

[3Deep]

Great post, I get art from our local college and boy they are something else, great great art but are hard to sep without tearing them all apart to redo.  I think the biggest problem with art is size and colors, I might get art that has the right amount of colors but way to small to up size without a mess, and then I might get art that is sized right but way to many blended colors for what they are paying for or my press can hold...how many of you print 10 to 14 color prints daily?.

Darryl
Ps Would you really expect off the street customers to have vector art, i have very few customers who know what vector means...I also think it's a disservice when shop takes a customers crappy art and give them a nice looking shirt without telling them about all the work they had to do or not charge for it, so the next printer they go to gets the, "the other guy did it with no problem" then again might be a way to keep a customer coming back on there part as long as they are giving away free service.

[Dottonedan]

Ya know, after reading Darryl's post, it reminded me that much of todays vector art coming from these young artist and design houses make use of tons of "vector" art but all in all, end up being what amounts to a raster file anyways. So many gradient meshes etc. used with rgb colors and cmyk etc.

[ScreenFoo]

My two cents.
In general, one is safe accepting vector art. Raster opens up a whole new world of possibilities, even more so with the growing number of low tech owners of high tech devices.

As for the OP's printer client. no offense to T-Shirt forums, but if a member there, they do have more than their share of plywood pressed, jury-rigging, duct tape using, bedroom and garage printers who are often less than current on the state of the industry.
They usually do come around though, and one does have to start somewhere.

Not a fan of kludging either, but I almost can't believe the last part.  You don't use duct tape?   
Ha, speaking of TSF did a little smackinrachnids this morning.   I don't think that guy's ever going to come around... 


As far as the actual topic goes, I like reasonably laid out art.
A crappy traced vector is a vector--what if it has thousands of stray nodes?  Or as Dan mentions--the kid that has a huge catalog, and all they do is drop in random crazy elements, overlapping everything without cleaning anything up?  Either way, it's vector, but it sucks.

[Chadwick]

I obviously didn't see the file in question, but it seems their only complaint was a bitmap overlay.
I would hence assume that they use spot color output from a vector program.
Perhaps they don't understand manual seps, or any modification of art is not included in the cost.
Did you assign a pantone or other value to the monochrome?

I did a whole bunch of sticker designs for this guy many moons ago.
I actually talked to the owner of the printshop, where they would be printed.
CMYK? Yes we do that. What LPI? 150. So you'd like 300dpi at scale,cmyk? Yes.
So I do my usual cartoon style, but use the airbrush liberally in the shades and blend department.
Line art is retained and tight.
I believe the shop is using offset? I did see them exposing plates on a quick tour.
( kinda rusty on other print method terms )
The 'kids' working pre-production just went ahead and did vector redraws...since..I guess that's all they know.
Kinda dumbed everything down, but whatever, I guess, since I was already paid.
 

And of course, as all have mentioned, this goes the other way too.
Garbage in, but expecting spectacular results for no $$$.
I deal with that EVERY SINGLE DAY, so yeah.
Most printers can come across jaded, but we've earned it.

Cheers.

[Chadwick]

A crappy traced vector is a vector--what if it has thousands of stray nodes?  Or as Dan mentions--the kid that has a huge catalog, and all they do is drop in random crazy elements, overlapping everything without cleaning anything up?  Either way, it's vector, but it sucks.

I'll take a napkin drawing over one of those vectors anytime.

[abchung]

For us we say vector only because as soon as you say "ya, I can take that .tiff" the next order is sent as a 1"x1" .tiff and they want a 14" x 14" print. Their response is - "Well last time you took it."
It sounds like you know well enough what you are doing, but 99.999999999999999% of people don't. It is much easier to make a policy - vector only, and stick to it. That way you don't end up on a Friday with someone that sent over this "wicked cool artwork I got off google images" which ends up being a 9 color and awesome quality at 1.5" x 1.5" and 12dpi.....

Exactly.

From people that know what they are doing, we will print all kinds of files.  But the general public if you say hey I can print a JPG, your gonna get something horrible and you will spend more time chasing them for a good file or time remaking it...

I do the same.... because most people don't understand why we have to charge them for art work when all we have to do is, scan the logo off their business card and print it. 

[JBLUE]

We take every kind of file out there. If it is usable we will use it. If it needs cleaned up we charge for it. If it needs redrawn we charge for it.

The biggest thing we do is explain all this up front. A good customer is an educated customer. We lay it out as clearly as possible. If the customer does not understand we explain it so that they do. You have to show why your time is worth the cost. I just ask them if they would be willing to work for free. 99.9% of their answers is no, so I then ask why should I? If they still do not get it I kindly show them the door.

For the shops that only take vector art that is too bad. You are limiting yourself on what you can print. I have one of those by me. He also will not print halftones above 35 LPI. One of the other printers wont even print halftones. When the customer walks in and sees Sim Process prints and Index prints on the walls they are blown away after dealing with one of those guys. That works out great for me. The charges do not seem to matter anymore.

I know some will say well you are going to lose business being that way. They are right. We are losing the business we do not want......

[59Graphix]

Did you assign a pantone or other value to the monochrome?

The only color was black and white. We made it to work on any color shirt. And yes they were both 100% pantone hex black and 100% trans white. The monochrome was also hex black 100%.
We will try to accommodate all our clients with artwork whether it's from a business card, a napkin or the bottom of their shoe but as said by JBlue, they must be told up front of the possible outcome.

[Chadwick]

Ok, so we're back on topic here.
I'm just trying to figure out what you may or may not have done wrong in the file.
Communication is not always what it should be.
(and God help you if you rely on proprietary renditions within one version of one brand of software )

[59Graphix]

Ok, so we're back on topic here.
I'm just trying to figure out what you may or may not have done wrong in the file.
Communication is not always what it should be.
(and God help you if you rely on proprietary renditions within one version of one brand of software )

Basically they want all vector. Period. Or they up charge to print the bitmap. I don't think there is a wrong for what I did. It's just not how they accept files. Everyone has there terms and conditions.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "rely on proprietary renditions within one version of a brand of software"
I believe I can read through this but maybe your on to something here. ....the floor is yours...

[Sbrem]

Basically they want all vector. Period. Or they up charge to print the bitmap. I don't think there is a wrong for what I did. It's just not how they accept files. Everyone has there terms and conditions.

I would wonder what else they don't know, if handling raster images is somehow a problem. Maybe find a more knowledgeable printer? Or teach them that it's no big deal to learn to use them?

Steve

[dlac]

I don't understand any of this.. we get art requests from the customer.. We draw it out on paper, get approval.. take it to the camera room and shoot it to size on film.. Then we use that film to hand cut separations or if we are lucky it is one color so we take that film.. put it on our screen.. Put a peice of foam under the screen and a piece of glass over the top and take it out in the parking lot and let the sun develop it.. what is all this crap about vector or raster?  words I did not know were related to what we do?
dlac

[Gilligan]

They just don't know what they are doing.
There's alot of that going around.
 

That's very much the case in our shop.  We have only outputted from Illustrator.  I know it can be done from PS and others... but we just don't have the experience and we don't have the knowledge on how to do it right.

We recently had a job using this image generator online... we went to the link they provided inputted all the information they wanted (one of those word cloud things)... generated the largest image it would allow... then we auto traced it. LOL

I KNOW it could have come out of PS easily, but just didn't know HOW (it was only two color).  Then we had a job that didn't happen but it had mostly vector, but some textures done via MASK and such.  We didn't know how to handle that.  I was going to have to sub out that art to Dan because of that simple lack of knowledge/skill (and lack of time to learn in this case).  With rush fees the client opted not to do it, or took it somewhere else... which is fine since it was down to the last 10 mins to order the shirts and have them in the next day and the qty kept decreasing.  Turning into a PITA type of job... anyway... lesson was still learned that we have some glaring gaps in our art skills for screen printing.

[StuJohnston]

I'm a tusche only shop. 

…then we auto traced it. LOL

  Auto tracing can't even get straight lines right.

[Gilligan]

I'm a tusche only shop. 

…then we auto traced it. LOL

  Auto tracing can't even get straight lines right.

Works well enough with high rez black and white text clouds.

Sorry for the fuzzy picture.