DTF artwork fixer
A shop does not need artwork made beautiful; it needs to know whether the file on screen will hold at the size ordered, and to get back something printable when it will not. That is the job this tool is being built for. The measurement half of it is already usable on this site. The repair half is in internal testing, and this page says so rather than showing a button that does nothing.
| What the pipeline measures | resolution, effective DPI at the intended size, edges, background, transparency, and any text in the artwork |
|---|---|
| Repairs in scope | background removal, edge cleanup, halo removal, upscaling, vectorising |
| Rule every repair obeys | measured again afterwards; a result that cannot be verified is not delivered |
| What happens to the original | never overwritten — repairs are produced as separate candidates |
| Usable on this site today | the print size calculator: measurement, no upload, no account |
| Not open yet | upload, repair and delivery — the pipeline is in internal testing |
| What will never appear | a green badge declaring a file fit to print |
Why a badge is the wrong output
A pass mark hides the one thing the operator needs, which is the number behind it. Two files can both clear a threshold and behave differently on cotton, because resolution is only one of the limits a transfer imposes. So the output is the measurement and the width it implies, and where a repair ran, the before and after of that same measurement.
- Effective resolution at the size in question, not the tag stored in the file
- The width the pixels genuinely cover, stated in cm and inches
- For any repair: the measurement before, the measurement after, and whether it was kept
Stopping counts as a result
The expensive failure mode for a tool like this is not refusing a file — it is accepting one it should have refused. A repair whose outcome cannot be checked afterwards is rolled back and the original comes back with the reason attached. That is a worse demo and a better tool, because the cost of a wrong green light is film, powder, a blank and an hour of the press.
What a shop can do in the meantime
Most of the decisions this tool automates can be made by hand today, and the pages under the DTF hub carry the numbers for each: the width a file covers, the wording that gets a better file out of a customer, what to charge for a repair, and which way to settle a complaint. The calculator does the arithmetic without asking for the file at all.
FAQ
- When does the upload open?
- When the delivery and storage layer is finished and verified. Publishing a date before that would be a guess, and a missed date on a page like this costs more trust than a missing one.
- Will it fix every file?
- No, and that is deliberate. Some files carry too little detail to print at the size requested, and for those the useful output is the measurement plus the wording to send back to the customer — not a repair that looks finished and fails on the garment.
- Which print methods will it cover?
- DTF, DTG, sticker and vinyl to begin with. The measurements differ per method because the physical limits do: what a transfer holds is not what a vinyl cutter holds.