How to create images, reprised

There sure are a lot of you out there doing some amazing design work!  Even a quick glance at our Flickr pool will prove my point.  But we've had a rash of questions lately about how a fabric design novice goes about creating an image to print.  Stephen posted about this early on in the life of Spoonflower, but I thought I'd post about this again for all you new users. 

Though I've mentioned Julia Rothman's repeat pattern tutorial on design*sponge before, it's worth posting here again because it's a very low-tech, approachable way to work up a seamlessly repeating design.  All's you need are paper, drawing or painting materials, scissors, and tape!  Oh, and a scanner.  But the important point is that you don't need Photoshop or Illustrator to create a repeating pattern.  If our own scanner didn't currently lack a power cord, I would show you all a repeating pattern that I myself designed.  This method works great, and if I can do it, I assure you that anyone can!

For those of you who would like to try composing images on your computer, you may want to take a first stab at this with ArtRage before investing in one of the more sophisticated design programs.  ArtRage offers a free, limited version of its painting program, but at $25 for the full-scale program, it's very affordable and easy to use.  This program contains painting and drawing tools as well as rulers and stencils, including the ability to create your own stencils. 

If manipulating photographs is more what you have in mind but you don't actually own Photoshop, you can download a free 30-day trial of this super-sophisticated photo manipulation and design program.  There are a zillion fun tutorials out there that will teach you what to do with your photos if you want more than just a simple photograph on fabric.  You can turn your photos into line drawings (perhaps to embroider over?) or Andy Warhol-esque popart prints for framing, or you can cut and paste elements of photos onto new canvases to create repeating patterns.  I have an antique Dresden plate quilt made of hundreds of different scraps, one of which is a dog's head repeated on a white and green polka dot background.  It cracks me up every time I spot it.  While it was obviously designed in the days before Photoshop, it would be so easy to make something similar and equally hilarious. 

So there are some ideas for you design beginners out there.  For those of you who are more adept at design, feel free to chime in with some other easy ideas here.  If there are enough of them, I can post about those, too!

Can I sell my designs on Spoonflower?

In the beta version of Spoonflower, the answer is no, you can only buy fabric bearing your own designs. This hasn't stopped some enterprising designers from selling their Spoonflower fabric on their own sites, however (see SewBettie,  Daisy Janie, and Cicada Studio for inspiration). When we come out of beta, however, you will be able to choose to make your designs available for purchase by others. This feature -- which will make Spoonflower into a marketplace for independent fabric designers -- will probably take some time to evolve and grow in complexity. But displaying your designs, as well as selling them, will ALWAYS be under your control.

We've also seen a few questions generated by concerns over some specific wording in part 5 of our terms of service. That section, titled "Proprietary Rights," grants

Spoonflower a nonexclusive, worldwide, transferable license to copy, crop, reproduce, publicly display, and distribute your Content. If your Content is uploaded as a design for fabric available on this Site, you grant to Spoonflower a nonexclusive, worldwide, transferable license to create derivative works of, modify, copy, sell, display and distribute the Content and fabrics created from or based on such Content.

Our wording here may well leave something to be desired, but please rest assured that we will never do anything with your designs without your permission. Running a web site requires us to modify, copy, display and distribute ALL the content on the site. Selling your design on fabric even just to you requires us to modify it and distribute it. Our system for creating a repeat of your design is actually a process that requires us to render a "derivative work," for example. I am certainly not a lawyer, so my explanation here reflects a layperson's understanding of the legal language, but one thing I can say with complete confidence is that we are creating Spoonflower to empower designers, not to exploit them.

We just need to find the right way to say that in contractual language.

How does Spoonflower work?

I'm no Ryan Seacrest, but here's a short explanation of how to use Spoonflower to print your design on fabric once you're able to create an account.

| View | Upload your own

[6-02-2008: Please note that due to bandwidth issues that were causing problems with the audio in this presentation, I've posted a new version to SlideShare.]

How much does custom fabric cost?

Updated 05-29-2009

Spoonflower prints on the highest quality fabric we can source using eco-friendly, non-toxic pigment inks.

Quilting-weight. Our base fabric is white 100% cotton, 60-square, and just slightly over 4 ounces per yard. It is lightweight combed cotton broadcloth with a soft hand -- perfect for quilting and sewing. The printable width of the fabric is 42 inches (with 1-2 inches of unprinted selvage).

Swatch (8" x 8") $5.00
Fat quarter (21" x 18") $11.00
Per yard (42" x 36") $18.00

Upholstery-weight. We also offer an upholstery-weight 100% cotton sateen (warp sateen) that is just over 10oz per yard, with a lustrous surface well-suited to digital printing. It's great fabric for bags, pants, home dec projects, and the like. The fabric has a printable width of 55 inches (with 1-2 inches of unprinted selvage).

Swatch (8" x 8") $5.00
Quarter-yard (27" x 18") $17.00
Per yard (55" x 36") $32.00

Linen-Cotton blend (For a limited time only). This is a special fabric that we'll only offer while our supply lasts during June. It's an antique yellow (tea-stained) 55% linen, 45% cotton blend that is around 5 ounces per yard and would be great for skirts and blouses, especially historical reconstructions. It has a printable width of 40 inches (1-2 inches of unprinted selvage) and has 51 x 49 threads per inch.

Swatch (8" x 8") $5.00
Fat quarter (20" x 18") $12.00
Per yard (40" x 36") $24.00

Organic Cotton Sateen.  Spoonflower's organic sateen is a creamy cotton fabric perfect for making baby items, blouses, dresses, and pillows. It is certified organic by GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard).  It has a printable width of 58 inches (147 cm), weighs 4.5 oz per yard, and has an extremely soft hand and glossy, cream-colored finish.      

Swatch (8" x 8") $5.00
Fat quarter (20" x 18") $12.00
Per yard (40" x 36") $24.00

--Shipping rates--

Notes:

• The maximum length of a single piece in an order is 5 yards (180 inches or 457 cm), but you can order multiple 5-yard pieces.

How do I create an image?

There's no single answer to this question, but I can offer a few suggestions.

Professional textile designers frequently use Photoshop to create or prepare their designs. They might start with a scan of a painting or drawing or they might compose the image in Photoshop. The pros also sometimes use special plugins for Photoshop. But Spoonflower is not just for pros, so...

There are a number of free programs available for creating and manipulating images, a few of which were sent to me recently by Meggiecat, a terrific craft blogger:

• Inkscape : Vector drawing
• Paint.NET: Photoshop type of program
• Art Rage : Realistic art painting, oils, chalk, etc. (earlier version is offered for free). Here's an image Kim put together using Art Rage without any prior experience.
• LineTracer: Converts scanned sketches to .eps.
• Wintopo: Raster to vector converter newer, more robust than LineTracer

Note (6-23-2008): Do NOT try to upload TIF files created using Microsoft Image Composer. If that is the only program you have for preparing designs, save and upload a JPG instead of a TIF.

Other ideas:

• Find a high-resolution public domain image from one of the amazing galleries available online. Be aware that you may only be able to employ an image of this sort for private, rather than commercial, use. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, for example, offers incredible galleries online, including this one: Art of the NOAA Photo Library.
• You could also print a photo or image of your own on fabric, although you should be aware that color shifting is likely to occur in a photographic image. The cleanest looking images printed on textiles have a relatively small palette of colors (under 30 or so), whereas if you examined photos and scans at the pixel-level of detail you would see thousands of colors.
• Scan something -- a kid's drawing, a leaf, a swatch of vintage fabric. In order to have it print at its best you would probably need to clean up an image like this in Photoshop, but even without that level of attention you can get some rewarding results.

Tell me what you come up with and I'll add it to the list!

Will you put my image into repeat?

For now we will take any image you upload and either tile it to fill the area of your fabric order or crop it to fit within the area of your fabric order as necessary.

We will not "step" the design repeats and we will not alter the size or dimensions of the design you upload.

If you want to print a single large image you should set up the image at the actual size you plan to print. You could set up a single image to be a linear yard, for example (which in our case would actually be 36"x44"), then order a yard.

If you wanted a smaller image on a yard of fabrc but do NOT want us to tile it to fill the area, set up your image with white space around it to fit the area of fabric you plan to order.

How much does shipping cost?

For the time being we ship exclusively through the US Postal Service or, if you are an International customer, through the USPS and your national service.

Shipping rates as of April 17, 2009 are as follows:

Shipping rates will be updated shortly!

Fabric order          US         Other countries
swatch                    $1                $2
fat quarter             $1                $2
yard                       $3                $7
2 yards                   $3                $7
3 yards                   $7               $12

These shipping rates will go up incrementally as you add items to your cart that increase the total weight of the package.

How long will it take to receive my fabric order?

During the beta we will be fulfilling orders very slowly. You should expect it to take up to three weeks to receive your fabric if you live in the domestic US. International orders will take even longer.

This is not the way we want it to be. Eventually we aim to print and ship every order within a day. But before you run you have to learn to crawl. We appreciate your patience.

How do I prepare a file for printing on fabric?

Updated on 11-03-2008

Acceptable file formats: JPG or TIF (8-bit, uncompressed).

FILE SIZE: Your image must be smaller than 25MB.

RESOLUTION: Set up your image at 150 dpi (dots per inch). If you want to design an 8"x8" swatch, for example, you need to upload an image that  is 1200 pixels x 1200 pixels. The print size of your image in pixel dimensions will be 150x the number of inches.

We will tile your design to fill the space of the fabric you order. If you upload an image larger than the area of fabric you order, then we will crop it from the lower left corner.

FORMAT & COLOR NOTES (for advanced users): When printing a design onto fabric using Spoonflower you'll get the best results when you upload a file in TIF format that consists of colors that fall within the LAB color space. You can create a design in the LAB space or convert it. You can also upload a JPG, which we will convert to a TIF before printing.

Tip: In Photoshop you can switch to LAB format by going to the Image menu and pulling down to Mode, then checking LAB color. You'll also want to make sure that in the same menu 8 bits/channel is checked rather than 16.

Converting to LAB is not enough, however. After changing to the LAB color profile under the Mode option in Photoshop, in CS3 you can can then go to the 'View' menu and see any of the colors in your design that are 'out-of-gamut,' which means colors that do not fall within the LAB color space that our printer is capable of reproducing. Using the Color Replace option, it is possible to shift out-of-gamut colors to in-gamut colors.

UPDATED 1/22/09: If you use Photoshop or Illustrator, we have two files -- created by our fabulous intern Danielle -- that may be useful to you. They offer a Photoshop color library and palette of colors that fall within the gamut of our printer. Note that these are a representative palette of colors and are not the only colors available. In the updated files, we've removed some of the reds that have tended to shift to orange in the printed fabric.

• Download SpoonflowerColors ACO file (photoshop)

• Download SpoonflowerColors ASE file (Adobe)

• Download ColorChart   You can upload the color chart to your own Spoonflower account and order it as a swatch for color testing.

CONFUSED?

If you don't have Photoshop and talking about TIF and LAB color make you anxious, don't worry. You can upload a JPG or other common image format and it will still print nicely. There may be colors in your image that can't be reproduced by pigments on fabric in our printer (very bright colors, absolute blacks, and very saturated colors, for example). If that is the case you will sometimes see all of the colors in an image shift and the colors may end up appearing different from what you expected.

Uploading an image that you know uses only LAB colors offers some protection against all of the colors shifting. In LAB color, if the printer encounters a color it can't reproduce it will shift only that color rather than all the colors.

If you're curious (and technically inclined) you can read more about TIFs here, and more about LAB color here.

What kind of fabric can I print on?

Updated 05-29-2009

Spoonflower is working to expand the range of fabric it offers.

We currently offer:

Quilting-weight. Our base fabric is white 100% cotton, 60-square, and just slightly over 4 ounces per yard. It is lightweight combed cotton broadcloth with an extremely soft hand -- perfect for quilting and sewing. The printable width of the fabric is 42 inches (with 1-2 inches of unprinted selvage).

Upholstery-weight. We also offer an upholstery-weight 100% cotton sateen (warp sateen) that is just over 10oz per yard, with a lustrous surface well-suited to digital printing. It's great fabric for bags, pants, home dec projects, and the like. The fabric has a printable width of 55 inches (with 1-2 inches of unprinted selvage).

Linen-Cotton blend (Limited-time only). This is a special fabric that we'll only offer while our supply lasts during June. It's an antique yelloow (tea-stained) 55% linen, 45% cotton blend that is around 5 ounces per yard and would be great for skirts and blouses, especially historical reconstructions. It has a printable width of 40 inches (1-2 inches of unprinted selvage).

It is our intention to offer additional fabric choices in the near future, including organic cotton. If you'd like to weigh in on what kinds of fabric you would most like to see, please drop Kim a line.

When will Spoonflower be open?

We're getting this question a lot, as you can imagine. Here's the latest:

Updated on 11-10-2008: We're open!

We're working our way through the beta wait-list. Over 1,000 people have already received invitations to try out the beta site, and a few hundred are left on the list as of this writing. Unless we get completely slammed by an unexpected PR event ("Please don't throw me in the brier patch!") everyone currently on the list should have received an invitation within the next week or so. Until we're fully up and running, however, we will continue to send invitations only to people who've added their email addresses to the wait list. Sign up for list here.

In the second week of May we will start to email invitations to create Spoonflower accounts to a small number of beta-testers. Because such a large number of people are interested in participating in the beta (thanks everyone!) we'll expand the number of invitations we send slowly over a period of two months or so. At the end of two or three months we hope to be able to take the wrapper off the web site and open registrations to everyone, but we'll have to see how things go. Thanks for being patient, and thank you again for all the encouragement. We're looking forward to hearing your suggestions and ideas.

How do I repeat an image to make a pattern?

Here's a relatively simple technique for using Photoshop to create a repeat without requiring a textile design plugin. The steps are taken from an online column by Frederick Chipkin, the author of Adobe Photoshop for Textile Design by Frederick L Chipkin.

1. Open Photoshop, open the image you want to be the basis of your repeat, then modify the canvas to reflect the size of the fabric you want to print (18"x22" for example).

2. Using the rectangular Marquee tool select the area for your repeat.

3. In the Edit menu, drag down to choose "Define pattern." In the dialog box, name your pattern and click 'OK.'

4. Deselect the Marquee (Select menu ->Deselect).

5. Go to the Edit menu and drag down to 'Fill.' In the Fill dialog box, next to 'Use" choose "Pattern." You can now choose your selected image as a custom pattern.  Click OK.

6. The area of your canvas around the original image should now be filled with your pattern.

Note that in the example below, my original image does not 'match up' on  the right/left and top/bottom, so there is a tiling effect. But it still looks nifty.

  -->

How do I prepare a fabric design for printing?

Meggiecat wrote the other day to ask the most obvious question about printing fabric on Spoonflower, which is "what do we need to do to prepare designs?"

I've delayed my response in the hope of being able to offer a bit more technical detail, but in the absence of a perfect response I'd like to go ahead and post a few suggestions. Please forgive me if I end up needing to revise any of this [likely].

File Resolution:
240 dpi is a minimum resolution for the design you wish to repeat in a pattern. If you want to be able to scale it up after you upload it, the image will need to be at least twice that. Updated info on preparing images is here.

Image Size:
You can take an image of any size (240 dpi or greater) and repeat it to create a pattern. Alternately, you could create the pattern repeat on your own computer and then upload a large file equal in size to the amount of fabric you wish to order. For example, the fabric we will be using is 44" wide (112 cm), so if you wanted to order a yard you could create an image that is 42" (the printable area) x 36" (or close to that). The file size limit is 25 MB, so if your design is large you will almost certainly have to use the JPG rather than the RIF format.

Fabric Size:
You can order a swatch (8"x8"), a fat quarter (18"x21") or any multiple of a linear yard (up to 3 yards).  We will always recommend that you order a swatch of your design before ordering a larger quantity. That will give you a chance to examine the colors firsthand to make sure they printed as intended.

Creating Repeats:
When you upload a design to your Spoonflower gallery, you will be able to create a pattern by tiling the image, using a half-step or half-brick repeat (which staggers the tiles), or by mirroring your image. In the case of tiling, in order for the pattern not to appear to be composed of a lot of individual rectangles, the design you upload will need to be composed so that the left side of the design 'joins' to the right side, and the top of the design 'joins' to the bottom. If you have a textile design program or Photoshop expertise, you can probably do this pretty easily. For the rest of us, however, we plan to post tutorials to help you through the process of creating patterns on your own.

File Types / Color Profile:
You will want to set up your files in LAB color profile or RGB profile with 8 Bits/Channel (rather than 16), and to save (and upload) them as .TIF, .JPG, or .PNG files with flattened layers. LAB is the ideal profile for printing. We cannot print from CMYK files. Do not compress the images.