To design your shirt for vivid printing, start with our powerful Apparel Design Tool where you can add multiple images and text in hundreds of fonts and colors to your shirt.
Start by simply selecting the color apparel garment you want from the style selector tool at the right-hand side of a T-Shirt product page or if you’re on mobile, from below the product. Please note the following:
- When designing for vivid print apparel, you now have the ability to specify which parts of your image should be transparent, and which parts should actually be printed as "white."
- When you design for our classic print apparel styles and colors, any 'white' in your design is ignored and not printed. It is treated as transparent so that the color of the shirt shows through.
Designing with Text
You can easily add text in any color on your design. White text looks great on a black t-shirt!
For more information on transparency in Vivid Print Apparel Images, please see the instructions below:
Designing with Images
Image Formats
As with all other products, Zazzle supports images in PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIF, PDF or AI formats. For vivid print apparel specifically, we recommend using PNG images with transparency.
Images with the color white
When you design for our classic print styles and colors, any 'white' in your design is ignored and not printed. It is treated as transparent so that the color of the shirt shows through.
When designing for vivid print apparel, you have the ability to specify which parts of your design should be transparent, and which parts should actually be printed as 'white'.
PNG Images
For vivid print apparel, we recommend PNG images with transparency. For transparency to be supported, your images must be PNGs with transparency.
Any areas that are supposed to be transparent will not be printed. White can be treated as either white or as transparent for vivid print apparel – after adding your image to the design, choose Advanced Options for the image and you may specify to show white as transparent if desired. All other colors will be printed as intended. Please note: partial transparency is not supported, if an area is not fully transparent, it will be printed as opaque.
Most graphics programs (e.g. Photoshop) support PNG images with transparency.
JPEG and Other Image Formats
If your design is showing white where you don't want it, we recommend you convert your JPEG or other image format to a PNG image with transparency. That way your image will appear exactly as you'd like it.
To convert your JPEG or other image format to PNG with Adobe Photoshop:
- Open your JPEG file in Photoshop
- Select Layer -> New Layer from Background
Your image should now be on Layer 0. - Select Layer -> New Layer and click OK.
This creates a new blank layer - Reorder the layers so that the layer with your image is on top
- Select the layer with your image
- If there are any areas of your image that you would like to be transparent, clear those areas. You may do this using the "select tool" or the "magic wand" tool. When you have selected the area you want to be transparent, select Edit -> Clear to remove that image data and make it transparent. You should see the background "checkerboard" in its place.
- Once you are finished setting your transparent regions, save your file as a PNG by selecting File -> Save As... and choosing PNG as your output format.
- Upload the file to Zazzle and design your shirt!
A Note About Using Images with the Color White
In any image, there are areas that you may want to be transparent (i.e. the area or background behind it shows through) or areas that you may want to be non-transparent. If you create PNG images with transparency, then those transparency settings will be obeyed. In photos, we would guess that no area should be transparent.
But if you have a JPEG image (or PNG image without transparency), you cannot specify which areas are to be treated as transparent. In that case, we let you specify all white in your image as transparent. To do this, under the "Customize It" tab, please check "show whites as transparent" on the image module.
"Show whites as transparent"
- When checked: The background color, shirt color, or any objects behind your image will appear in place of any white in your image.
- When unchecked: The white in your image will appear as you see it on screen.
CHECKED:
UNCHECKED:
