To design your shirt for vivid printing, start with our powerful 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 you choose “Vivid Printing: White Underbase,” you have the ability to specify which parts of your image should be transparent, and which parts should actually be printed as "white."
- When you choose “Classic Printing: No Underbase,” 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, select ‘Image Effects’ from the menu above the image and selecting either “Never,” “Background only,” or “All white in image.” By selecting “Background only,” the white areas surrounding your design will become transparent. By choosing “All white in image,” all the white areas in your image will become transparent. Selecting “Never” will mean all white areas are printed as white.
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
- Go to ‘File > Export > Export As’
- Select PNG
- Adjust settings if needed. 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.
- 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, use the ‘Image Effects’ tab.
“Never”/ “All white in image”
- Never: The white in your image will appear as you see it on screen.
- All white in image: The background color, shirt color, or any objects behind your image will appear in place of any white in your image.
ALL WHITE IN IMAGE (fully transparent):
NEVER (no white as transparent):