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By: Anthony Palmieri
August 22, 2006

Abstract:

In these days of digital cameras, and on-line photograph development companies, individuals can be even more creative and create custom T-shirts or other cool items. Adding a personal touch to family pictures as well as other loves such as pets and cars makes your T-shirt even more unique. If you walk around at many pet events and dog shows such as the American Kennel Club, Purina Events, or Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, these dog enthusiast proudly wear a T-shirt that shows their interest ranging from a toy breed, working breed, sporting breed or other beloved dog. Most of these shirts you see are usually mass produced and many people have the same shirt. Now whether you have a Shih Tzu, Yorkshire Terrier, Pekingese, or a mix, this article will give you some basic ideas that will help you transform your pictures into T-shirts that are different, unique and personal.

Creating Unique Pet T-shirt Pictures

A low cost digital camera coupled with some imagination can open the door for you to create unique picture clothing with images of your family and pets or special thing. For a few years now the home user could use special iron-on transfer paper to print a picture on a home printer then iron it on to clothing. It looks great initially, however, it tends to be stiff, and after a few washes fades and can crack. High end T-shirt printing was expensive, and restricted to large companies that were making many of the same T-shirt. As with most technologies, as they evolve they improve and become less expensive.

The most common technique for printing onto fabrics was silk screening, which is an expensive processes that is not cost effective for an individual looking to create only one or two shirts. A process called sublimation has gained more popularity and is available through many of the on-line development houses. Sublimation uses special inks called sublimation ink. This ink is used to print your photograph on a special transfer paper, and that along with heat, and pressure transfers the image to a variety of materials such as cotton and polyester (T-shirts ), metals, plastics, ceramics, and special high temperature plastics such as Plexiglas, Mylar or melamine. Sublimation ink is unique where it has the ability to convert from a solid to a gas without going through a liquid form moving into the fibers of the fabric. This conversion and ink transfer process creates a crisp color with a highly defined image that is very durable.

Now that you have all this capability just an email away, what can you do with it? The basic starting point is to take a digital picture and send it in exactly as it came out of he camera to one of these print companies and create a basic photo shirt. Lets go beyond the basic picture and create custom works of art that you can proudly wear.

Software packages like Adobe Photoshop and Corel Draw have many capabilities that allow you to customize your pictures. The question often asked is; "What should I do?" The intent of this article is to give you a few ideas to spark your creativity and see what fits your personality. Our focus at www.PalmieriConcepts.com has been on pet and automotive art, so we will use pets for examples, although these ideas can be applied to family portraits, pictures of your automobiles, and even landscapes. You can exchange the word "dog" for cat, boat, girlfriend, car, etc. to expand upon the ideas.

When you are taking a picture of your dog, do not just think about what you see in the viewfinder, but think about the final composition. Also think about other T-shirts that you have seen and what you liked and disliked. A few questions to consider are:

1. Will the dog be a alone in the picture?
2. Will there be multiple images of the dog merged together?
3. Will there be multiple dogs or different pets?
4. Can the dog be used as both a background element as well as a foreground element (One dog scene overlaid over another as a background.)?
5. Keep in mind the nature of the dog, such as if it is a working dog, you may wish to put in into a fantasy farm scene, or a small toy dog, in a more dressed up frilly scene. What makes sense and will stand out?
6. What angles will look best? (Usually most people take a picture standing up and pointing down. Try laying on the floor and getting a straight on, or a slightly up view.)
…. and the list goes on.

 

Taking a digital picture does not cost you anything until you print it out, so I recommend that you take many pictures at different angles, and of all key elements. Looking through the viewfinder gives you only one perspective of the final picture, however, once the image is on your computer screen your mind will open the door to an unlimited world. Keep in mind that it is not easy to keep pets still for long, so snap those pictures. If you are thinking about a shirt with multiple pets, you may be better off holding separate photo sessions where you focus on just one pet at a time. Then using the photo editing tools you can combine the images for the final picture.

Things to consider when looking and photographing a dog (or other pet):

1. Is this a muscular dog where you want to emphasize its size? Even if it is a small dog or a large dog with a muscular build, a side profile often accentuates this. This side profile can also be a great background image.
2. Are there any distinctive features such as a large eyes or those short noses? These features when focusing on the head can be eye catching, and complementary to the side profile mentioned above.
3. Try not to stereotype your dog and look for other ways to enhance its personality. For example, a poodle does not have to always look cute. It you have a poodle that likes to smile, even though a smile can look vicious, it will give a different look than the typical. Even a text caption can add to this.

The points above are general picture guidelines, but when composing a picture for print on a fabric you must remember that fabric does not have the depth and color representation of photo paper to show the details. Fabric also has a matt like finish so these additional points must be kept in mind.

1. Keep the T-shirt image less busy, meaning, focus on the dog image, and less of background.
2. To minimize a hard edge around a square picture, have the picture blurred or faded around the edges so it fades into the fabric, This can be done by taking a straight edge and adding 10 pixels (on a 200 DPI) of fade, or even creating an irregular outline like a irregular cloud fading into a fabric.
3. Try to make the foreground bold colors "BOLD" so the dog stands out.
4. Complement the picture with some descriptive text to further personalize it, even if it is just the dogs name, or if you are lucky to have multiple pets, even a saying such as "Just cant have one!" or "My Babies."
5. Lastly, remember to add that small text at the bottom with your name for the added personal touch.

This is a brief list of things to consider, and in time your mind will run with the endless possibilities. Your biggest challenge will be to weed through those ideas, do some experimenting and pick the best ones.

For some examples of what is described here, refer to www.PalmieriConcepts.com in the "Pet Gallery" and "T-shirt" sections. Look at these examples think about how you can apply these to your own work. Have fun!