DTF Printing

DTF stands for direct-to-film. Your design is printed onto a clear film, coated with a powdered adhesive, cured, and heat-pressed onto the garment. The print sits on the surface as a thin, flexible layer.

The thing that makes it useful is what it doesn't need: no screens, no color separations, no setup per color. A one-color logo and a twelve-color photograph cost the same to produce. That single fact is why it changed the economics of small orders completely.

It also bonds to almost anything — cotton, polyester, blends, nylon, and performance fabric. If you're printing moisture-wicking jerseys or hi-vis, DTF sidesteps the dye migration that makes screen printing on polyester awkward.

Under 48 pieces. This is the big one. Screen printing has to recover its setup across the run, so below about 48 shirts DTF is genuinely cheaper — and we'll quote it that way even though it's usually the smaller sale.

Full-color artwork, photographs, or gradients. Screen printing can approximate those with halftone dots, but you'd be paying for six or eight screens and it still won't match your file.

Different designs across one run. Names, numbers, individual departments, one-off samples. Every piece can be different at no extra setup.

Polyester and performance fabric. No dye blockers, no low-cure inks, no pink-tinged white prints three weeks later.

The full comparison, including where screen printing wins, is in DTF vs. screen printing.

DTF pricing is flat per piece — roughly the same whether you order 12 or 100, and the color count doesn't change it. That predictability is part of the appeal. Pricing is driven by print size rather than complexity: a small left-chest hit costs less than a full back.

Minimum is 12 pieces. No setup charge, no screen fee, nothing to recover.

On artwork, DTF wants resolution rather than vectors. A high-quality raster file is fine, but it needs to be 300 DPI at full print size with a transparent background. A logo pulled off a website at 600 pixels wide will look soft blown up to 11 inches — that's the single most common problem we see.

You can feel it. DTF sits on top of the fabric rather than sinking into it. Modern DTF is far softer than the heat-transfer vinyl people remember, but a cured screen print still feels softer, especially on a large full-front design.

There's a cut edge. On artwork with hard outer edges you'll never notice. On something with wispy, feathered edges — smoke, watercolor, a soft glow — the transparent film can catch the light slightly.

Bulk economics favor screens. Past 48 pieces of a simple design, screen printing wins on price and hand feel, and we'll say so.