Last updated on January 6th, 2022
Do you own a shop to sell a variety of graphic designs and want to run it successfully? Well, the first and foremost concern should be to sell high-quality design images to your customers. You should sell the images that give the best printing results. So, make sure that you optimize designs that produce the desired printing results.
Before we proceed further to find out more about the ways to optimize graphic designs, first know what exactly we mean by optimization. When talking about optimizing designs, it means that you are optimizing an image of the design for printing.
Most designs ultimately go through the printing process. Therefore, you must optimize pixel design. This optimize definition also includes working on contrast and saturation aspects of the design.
You need to optimize designs for a wide range of products such as flyers, brochures, labels, shopping bags, posters, book covers, t-shirts, and business cards, etc. The printing need arises on almost all surfaces and products for brand promotion and selling of artworks.
So, it is imperative to pay heed to design optimization once it is created so that it becomes printing-friendly. You should give your customers the designs that are accurate, flawless, and can be produced instantly when put under the printing process. This will help you in keeping good customer relationships.
Such optimized designs look great and give a nice feel when printed on a product. The printed surface appears smooth. With such designs, you can realize color gradients and get any number of colors incorporated into the design.
Here Are Some Considerations To Optimize Designs
01. Use Pixel Graphics
The first thing to keep in mind to optimize designs is the use of pixel graphics. These should be your preference so that you have the advantage of digital direct printing. When we talk of pixel graphics, we are not referring to vector images, which are the file types such as EPS, CDR, SVG, and AI.
Pixel graphics are the images that may have multiple colors, but they are made of individual pixels, which are elements of the picture. Such a particular pixel has specific color information. When all the pixels are put together, they make the final image.
These pixels also play a vital role while determining the width and height of the image you want to optimize. This facilitates you to print such an image in the size of your choice.
02. Choose The Right File Format
Choosing the right format of the file is essential to optimize a pixel-based image. Many file formats such as PNG, JPG, BMP, and GIF are available to save images. But PNG is the most suitable for the purpose.
This is because the PNG file format lets you have transparent backgrounds. Another reason to prefer this file is that unlike in JPG, there is no compression in PNG. You can always ensure the high quality of the saved image in few simple steps.
Another thing to consider here is the size of the file. 10M file size is usually regarded as sufficient.
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03. Upload Designs With Sufficient Resolution
The density of the picture elements matters a lot when you optimize designs. So, what should be the image resolution? We suggest you keep it at least 200 dpi. Any lesser dpi is undesirable as it will fail to produce high-quality of the image in print.
Note that if the graphic design is 1000 pixels wide, it will measure 12.7 cm in width, if the dpi is 200. If the design is 2000 pixel-wide, it will give an image of 25 cm width.
But if the image is of the lower pixel in width or height, such as 800 x 600 pixels, it will lose quality when enlarged. Therefore, choose the right resolution and number of pixels as well.
Note that the more pixels are there in an image per inch, the higher will be the quality of the image. It will help you to sell your art.
Such an image will be sharper and more precise. If the pixel per inch density is not sufficient, it will result in the pixelation of the image, which will become blurred and distorted.
04. Remove The Design From The Background
You should ensure that the background is transparent. This means that the printer can ignore it. To remove the background, use Photoshop. Select the ‘wand’ tool and then select the background area that you want to remove from the image.
Make sure that you have removed all the small groups of pixels that may be remaining. You can see those areas by zooming the picture. Then, save the image in PNG format.
05. Ensure Better Contrast And Brightness
Another thing to consider to optimize designs is regarding contrast and brightness. Often, we see that the colors we saw on the screen appear to be different in print. That is mainly due to the resolution of your monitor.
Another reason for the difference of color appearance is that when we render the colors from RGB to CMYK, some alterations do happen.
But that should not happen if you ensure that the colors look the same. For example, a color may appear brighter on the screen than on the printed shirt. So, ascertain that your color matches with your print projects.
As a professional graphic designer, you should always increase the contrast and saturation of your graphic design and even take it to a high degree. This is because when a color looks too bright on screen, it will look just perfect after print.
Do not be afraid of increasing the levels even if the image seems jarring on screen. Also, make sure that you upload your graphic designs in RGB mode.
Know that the print production process takes place on the CMYK, which is Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black (K). The CMYK color spectrum is not complete and wide-ranging. This means all the RGB colors cannot be put to print on the CMYK spectrum.
So, if you set artwork in RGB color mode and send it to print, it will get converted to the CMYK color model. Therefore, at the time of designing a product for print, make sure that the document is in CMYK mode.
You need to do some guesswork to find out if the design needs to be adjusted. If the contrast between the small details and texture is low, then increase the contrast a bit more.
06. Consider The Bleed
Bleed is the area that is usually outside of the main artwork. By keeping the area blank, you leave the space for the printer to cut it during the production process.
This bleed area is essential to leave as the printer will manually cut it to create the central area of artwork. Therefore, leave at least a 5mm bleed area for the printer as a standard followed by many.
These are the primary considerations to keep in mind when you optimize designs to get better results when printing the design.
PrintShop by Designhill is a leading creative marketplace, which you can use to sell your artwork and earn profits. But make sure that the designs you save and want to sell are perfectly optimized for printing as the customers may use them on different products.
Wrapping Up
If you create designs and want to sell them, then optimize designs. Make sure that your artwork is print-friendly. This means that the piece of art should not become blurred and looks different in color when put to print on a product. To ensure that, choose the right file format to save your design image and pay attention to the resolution. Remove the design from the background which printers usually ignore. Consider better contrast and brightness as well.
