For full-color photographic Images, a match print essential. Everyone's monitor will display colors differently so if you are looking for close color matching, please send us a chrome or previously printed material.

In general, keep in mind that most screen printing is a spot color medium, as opposed to offset, where the majority of color work is process.

• Do not apply any trapping to the image.
• If identical objects overlay one another precisely, please separate by layer.
• If appropriate, submit files with all colors converted to spot, and all unused colors deleted from the document.
• Please convert all type to outlines.
• Use PMS numbers for color names. Be sure to check a PMS book for color accuracy as the on-screen versions are often misleading.
• If you are placing raster images into an Illustrator document, please refer to the guidelines below to avoid any image resolution issues.

Please do not send jpgs or gifs that have been downloaded from the web. These files are sized at a low resolution in order to load quickly on a website. They do not provide enough resolution for us to use as actual artwork.

Submit all full color photographic and continuous tone files in RGB format. We can guarantee the best color fidelity if the file is in these "unadulterated" formats. If you are having an image scanned just for your T-shirt design, request RGB from your service bureau or scanner operator. Many high end scanning units will scan images in CMYK. This is great for offset, but not so hot for screen printing. Some places will simply convert the file from the original CMYK format to RGB. This is acceptable but not the best way to do things. The key issue here is that when an image is in CMYK mode it's palette of colors has been reduced for the offset printing process. If the image is to be spot color separated, we can often reproduce a wider range of colors than offset printing. Giving us the image in CMYK will limit the possibilities. Also, when a CMYK image is displayed on your monitor the appearance of the image is controlled by a number of preferences you have set up concerning dot gain and printing inks. In RGB these factors will be ignored.

Photographic, continuous tone color and grayscale files should be to size, at least 150 ppi, (pixels per inch).

Text files, Spot color or black & white illustrations and line drawings created or scanned into Photoshop require a very high resolution in order to maintain clean curves and and crisp edges. Please submit these files at no less than 300ppi.

Layouts and small jpgs for quotes can be sent to art@mirrorimage.com

Files that are more than 5MB tend to bog down our mail server. The better choice for sending large files is by uploading to our ftp site. Here's how to do it:

1) Prepare the file. IMPORTANT! No spaces in the filename, because the machine you are uploading to does not understand them and you will get an error message! Compress your files using software such as StuffIt, WInZip or Shrinkwrap.

2) To access our FTP site, you'll need software such as Fetch. FTP software can be downloaded off the web at places like tucows.com or shareware.com.

3) Set up a new connection with your FTP software and enter this info:

• The Host name is - mirrorimage.com
  
• The User ID is - files@mirrorimage.com
  
• The Password is - upload