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Fashion & Textiles vocabulary · Colours, Prints & Decoration

Digital printing

Meaning in fashion & textiles, with examples

/ˈdɪdʒɪtl ˌprɪntɪŋ/nounCommon term

In fashion & textiles, digital printing means: Printing designs directly onto fabric or garments from a computer file with inkjet machines, without screens.

In Turkish: dijital baskı

How it is used

Ideal for small runs, many colours, photographic images and fast sampling, because there are no screen costs. Ink types depend on the fibre: reactive or pigment inks for cotton, sublimation for polyester. DTG (direct to garment) prints on finished pieces.

Example sentences

  1. With digital printing we can sample ten designs in a week.

  2. Digital printing on polyester uses sublimation, so the colours stay bright.

Common collocations

  • digital textile printing
  • digital print run
  • sublimation printing
  • DTG printing
  • printA design applied to the surface of fabric with ink or dye, such as flowers, logos or stripes, rather than woven or knitted into it.
  • screen printingA printing method that pushes ink through a fine mesh screen onto fabric, using a separate screen for each colour in the design.
  • all-over printA print that covers the whole surface of the fabric with a repeating design, as opposed to a single placement print on one area.
  • strike-offA short test print of a design on the actual production fabric, sent to the buyer to approve colours, scale and quality before bulk printing.

More terms: Colours, Prints & Decoration

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