Make a DTF-ready PNG, free

Start from your design as a PNG with a transparent background, then fix the three things that go wrong. Soft edges, shadows and glows need to become hard edges or dots, because the white ink under a DTF print follows every pixel that has any opacity. The picture has to be the right size: the pixels across, divided by the printed width in inches, is its dpi, and printers commonly ask for 300. And the file should carry that size, so the print software places it at the width you set. This tool does all three and shows the result on a dark and a light shirt before you download.

A JPG cannot be transparent, so a logo on white has a white box round it, and that box would print. Drop the JPG here: if the edges of the picture are one plain color, that color is taken out round the design and the rest is repaired the same way. If the background is a photo or a pattern, use the background remover first.

Transparent where nothing should print and solid where something should, with no half-transparent in between. Edges are cut cleanly, with no pale or dark rim from the old background. Shadows and glows are either gone or turned into dots. The margins are trimmed, there are no lines or gaps too fine to hold, and the file is about 300 pixels per inch at the size it will print. Printers differ, so check yours for its own rules.

On screen a 20% black shadow is just a faint darkening. A DTF printer puts a layer of white ink under every pixel that has any opacity, and a faint colour on top of full white reads as a hazy light patch, and on a dark shirt as a white halo. Many RIP programs let you set an opacity cut-off, so check yours; the sure fix is to leave no half-transparent pixels in the file. The preview here shows the print the way that rule lays it, as a rule of thumb and not a copy of any one printer.

Removed is the safe choice. Dots keep a trace of the shadow: the shadow is drawn as a halftone at the lines per inch you set (35 is a common start for shirts), so it prints as dots instead of a haze. Dots show most on a light shirt and almost not at all on a dark one if the shadow is black. A hard-edged shadow is a third choice, but it turns the shadow into a solid dark shape.

Because the grey and white squares are part of the picture. Image search results and some screenshots look transparent but are not. This tool recognizes a painted checkerboard and says so instead of giving you a file that would print it. The transparent PNG checker takes the checkerboard out.

Many printers and gang sheet services ask for 300 dpi at the size it will print, so a 10 in wide print wants about 3,000 pixels across. The tool tells you the dpi your design really has at the width you set and warns under about 200, which is a rule of thumb. It never pretends otherwise: "Resample to 300 dpi" makes the file the right size and its edges smooth, but adds no detail.

No. A 400 pixel logo printed 10 in wide is 40 pixels per inch, and no setting here changes that. Resampling gives the file the pixels a printer expects and keeps the outline clean, but internal detail stays as soft as it was. Start from a larger file, or print smaller.

It pulls the edge of the print in by a fraction of a millimetre, so a slightly misplaced layer of white ink does not show as a rim round the colour. The default is 0.1 mm, which is about one pixel at 300 dpi; set it to 0 to keep the exact outline. Fine lines and thin parts are left as they are, because pulling them in would break them.

The tool marks lines and gaps thinner than 0.5 mm at your print size on the "Where" view. That number is a rule of thumb, not a specification: very fine lines may not hold on the film, and tiny gaps can fill in. Ask your printer for the minimum they work to and set it in the box.

Not inside the design. The pixels that are solid keep their colour. Along an edge, pixels take the colour of the solid art beside them, so a white or dark rim from the old background goes. Dots take the colour of the shadow they replace.

It does not remove a photo background, trace the design as a vector, add detail to a small picture, or match your printer's or RIP's color profile. It does not know your RIP's opacity cut-off, white ink settings or minimum line width, so the numbers it shows are rules of thumb. Print a test before a run.

No. The file is read, repaired and written in your browser, and saved from memory on your computer. Close the tab and nothing is left.