For merchandise and fashion there are mainly 3 particular methods of screen printing employed. ‘Spot Colour’ printing is widely used and works well with many types of graphics. Spot color printing is used for those graphics that do not have photographic properties.

The colours of the inks to be used in the reproduction of the graphic images are usually Pantone specified colours chosen by a graphic designer. In order to isolate the hues of the ink in the image, Pantone coated or noncoated references are selected. Used in publishing, printing and design, the Pantone matching system, is internationally used to identify colors with a unique name and number.

Spot colour printing is well suited to printing branded promotional garments or items in which colour identity and uniformity needs to stay the same throughout a varying range of items.

“4 Colour Process” is another method of t-shirt printing. This method of printing is used mainly for photographic images and illustrations that consist of a wide range of colours, tones and graduations. The images found in many books and magazines and printed by the 4 colour process.

These inks allow light to flow through and then merge together on white backgrounds to make all the hues and tones of the orginal one. It is a lot harder to process on fabric than it is on paper. However the method employed is essentially the same.

This particular sort of t-shirt printing will, obviously, only be effective on white cloth. It won’t work on coloured garments.

‘Simulated Process’ is a method used to reproduce full colour images onto colour fabrics. The costs associated with setting up the print are greater than those of simple spot colour designs. Therefore, they are only useful for larger print runs numbering more than 100. The artwork is divided into different hues and tones utilising a process that resembles spot colour printing in order to obtain the overall appearance and style of the original picture.

For transferring heavy metal imagery and fantasy imagery from CD covers to black T-shirts for band merchandise, this popular method is used by printers everywhere. Due to the higher set up prices which includes the separating of the colour as well as an increased amount of colours used to print the pictures, this works out to be the most expensive way of printing.