For the Business of Apparel Decorating
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/865605
Erich Campbell is the Partner Relationship Manager at DecoNetwork, leveraging his more than 18 years experi- ence as an award-winning digitizer, e-commerce manag- er, and industry educator to create partnerships in the decorating community and empower decorators to do their best work and achieve a greater measure of suc- cess. A current educator and long-time columnist, Erich ERICH'S EMBELLISHMENTS B Y E R I C H C A M P B E L L continues to take every opportunity he can find to provide value to the industry. ''T his is all I have." These five words can bring down any digitizer's mood. Though it's common to recieve dis- mal, low-resolution digital art in all segments of the decoration industry, there's a special dread when embroidery cus- tomers leave poorly-stitched garment samples with no additional resources to be recreated. No matter what a customer says about matching the piece, any decent decorator knows that the customer will have expectations of quality that no amount of side-by-side comparison can remove. Digitizers need to adjust for pull and push compensation to keep everything in register and ensure text elements are straight and leg- ible, all while maintaining the proper shape, size, and composition of the graphical elements in the logo for a high-quality finish. When we start from an embroidered sample alone, we can't know if the embroiderer before us achieved this. If text is uneven, was it meant to be? If an element is oval-shaped, was it an oval in the art, or a circle that warped from bad compensation? Ideally, a digitizer should have a clear copy of the original art so that he or she can create an embroi- dered interpretation that's technically sound while evoking the look of the original art as much as possible. This means that if you want to create high-quality embroidery from a sample alone, you'll have to do some prep work. That said, you can reduce the time and effort you put into the process with some careful planning. PHASE 1: RESEARCH Phase one of the process starts with options requiring the amount Sample It Working from Embroidered Samples When hooping a design for scanning, you don't want to use the method you would on a machine. This makes the fabric stand far away from the bed of the scanner. Even when tak- ing pictures, your images may be hard to light evenly due to shadows from the hoop. Flash isn't a great option either, as it washes out detail, especially with a high-sheen thread. (All images courtesy the author) 30 || P R I N T W E A R S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7