how to vector images and custom design t-shirts with adobe illustrator 2022

Today we went from draft idea to design to print finally heat presses are custom designed for t-shirts we are using heat transfer paper for light clothes and dark clothes by McLaren designs

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video transcript

All right, all right, all right. I want to thank you for stumbling onto my channel. You have a good one for you today. Mainstream entertainment. Let’s get into it.

00:00:13:06 – 00:00:37:01
Unknown
And what’s up, everyone? Thanks for joining in today. We’re going to be designing a 911 t shirt that I have been commissioned to design. So without any further ado, let’s get into it. We’re going to be using Adobe Illustrator and I’m going to be showing you how to turn any image into a vector image so you can make them as big or small as you want.

00:00:37:01 – 00:01:02:18
Unknown
When designing a t shirt. So let’s open up Illustrator. Let’s get a new project going. Are bought eight and a half by 11 inches. We’re going to be on a pretty big t shirt. I’ve already got my images and I’m going to bring them in again. These are just images that I got off line. Again, we’re going to be vectoring them.

00:01:03:04 – 00:01:31:12
Unknown
So we just want the basic outline of the image so that we can make them as big or small as the client and oil painting. And we buy and then we go ahead and bring in my second images so I can have all my images in the same project because it just makes it easier. We’re going to be taking this and copying our picture onto our main artwork, so let’s go ahead and make this a vector file.

00:01:31:12 – 00:01:59:05
Unknown
You want to select your image, go down up to objects, come down to image tracing, and you just want to make it on expanding. Yet it’s painted and now you want to bring out your image tracing panel. And we’re going to change this to outline with sort. Okay, so that’s going to give you a nice outline of your image.

00:01:59:16 – 00:02:26:08
Unknown
But we want to get the full outline of the image. Reason, why we use this instead of a pen, is because it gets more details when you want to come down to the color section, which I’ll show you that in a little bit later. But right now, you’re going to be playing with these until you get exactly what you want, which is the main outline of the image.

00:02:27:21 – 00:03:11:14
Unknown
You don’t want too much. It’s going to give you too much. Okay, so now we’re getting closer to what we want you. So you have the outline here. Now we’re going to do a little final check up and expand on this. So now we’ll be able to separate everything layer by layer. So expand. And now we have our vector image that we can do with the pleats.

00:03:12:04 – 00:03:43:01
Unknown
But now we have to add group all of these expanded layers so that we could separate them one by one. So you click on the whole thing. I like the whole thing and I’m blue, right click on a PC press and look at this, and now they’re all separated. We go down to the Layers tab and we can see everything is still highlighted.

00:03:43:01 – 00:04:16:16
Unknown
So I’m the highlight. Everything you can now click on this background because I don’t want this background right? So I can click the background and go find it in the last part you should see a little blue silence on and that that’s the current selected layer. And if you don’t want to be destructive, you can just turn it off and you have your fully vector image without the background.

00:04:16:16 – 00:05:52:17
Unknown
All right. So we’re going to save this image and move on to our next one. For this one, we’re going to go through the same process as we just did with the eagle. Okay. So you want to have your image selected, go down to the image source and expand it or make it. And again, you’re going to try to do the same thing and get a good selection, outline, selection of your image and through the magic of Internet TV, we are going to speed this up for you because we have already showed you this process.

00:05:52:17 – 00:06:30:06
Unknown
Okay. So now we’re going to go ahead and expand it and start deleting layers that we do not want in the picture, which is pretty much the whole background. Okay. So now that we have everything expanded, remember, everything is still glued together now. So we have to select everything and then select the whole picture again. And now we’re going to right click on the mouse and down to en route and we’re going to unwrap everything.

00:06:30:06 – 00:06:58:09
Unknown
So now everything is on its own individual path. Okay, so now to start finding, remember, just find the one that you want to delete, be, select everything, click on the group that you want, make sure just what you want to delete is highlighted and go ahead and find the little blue dot that says it’s on for that section in your layers.

00:06:58:09 – 00:07:38:05
Unknown
Panel. I might be scrolling a little bit too fast, but there’s a okay. You would continue just like that until you get the image that you want me. I’m going for removing the whole background and probably some of the waterfront area. In the beginning. So through the magic of Internet TV, we are going to speed my process up.

00:07:38:05 – 00:08:26:13
Unknown
So we’ll see how we’re just removing the background little by little. We do a little fine tuning until we get the image that we want. Probably going to take out some of the ocean in the front to and we’ll have a nice clean vector image. All right. So now we have New York City with a nice, clean background and it’s already expanded.

00:08:27:04 – 00:09:02:00
Unknown
So now we’re going to go to our next picture, our eagle. And we are going to duplicate this and put it on to our main artboard and start getting our draft design going. You want to press control? Well, first you want to highlight the whole image and press control. Hold it down and drag your image until you get the double.

00:09:02:00 – 00:09:49:03
Unknown
And then we’re going to take this double and we’re going to drag it on to our main artboard and we can start designing our 911 teaching. And now that that’s done, we’re going to do the same thing with our York City image. We’re going to highlight the whole image. You’re going to click control and drag the image to.

00:09:49:03 – 00:10:30:07
Unknown
We get a double now we’re going to take this double and bring it on to our main article. So I didn’t mess up here real quick. I just want to go ahead and show you. You want to make sure you have them on separate layers. You don’t want them to be on the same layer. So I’m going to go ahead and undo this.

00:10:30:20 – 00:11:24:16
Unknown
Remove the city from here and I’m going to go ahead and put a new layer down and I’m going to copy the city on to here we go. Now, everything is separated by its own layer. And and it’s just going to make editing from here on a lot more easier, especially when you have to do okay. So now it’s just coming down to the design and looks wise.

00:11:24:18 – 00:12:31:19
Unknown
I want the eagle to fit in behind New York City skyline. So we’re going to speed this process up until we get to the next process. All right. I think I like the way that looks now. For the last part, we’re going to pull in our last image, which is the American flag. We’re going to do the same thing.

00:12:31:19 – 00:13:28:00
Unknown
We’re going to do a image trace and then we’re going to expand it. This was going to be a little bit easier. It’s not as much details to it. So we don’t have to spend as much time on it, but we’re still going to speed it up. Okay. So now we want to make a copy of it and bring it on to our main artboard.

00:13:28:17 – 00:14:01:04
Unknown
Remember, make sure it has its own layer that is sitting on its own layer. Okay? So you have a lot more control over it. And once we do that, because I’m trying to put this flag inside of the Eagles wings, so everywhere you see the Eagles wings, you’re actually going to be seeing flag instead of the wings, which is something I think is pretty dope.

00:14:01:14 – 00:14:34:15
Unknown
Right. So the first thing we want to have to do is we’re going to have to make the Eagles wings a mask and then we are going to have to fill the mask with the flag. So there’s two things we have to do right now. So first, let’s highlight just the portion of the eagle that’s going to give us just the leaves.

00:14:34:15 – 00:15:29:05
Unknown
Right. You have that highlighted and double check on your layers tab that that that’s going to control and then click make a mask right. Oh, okay. Leave this like this. This is done. Now we have to go to our flag. Okay? Now we have to make the flag a pattern in our swatch lessons. Okay, so here’s how you turn an image into a pattern.

00:15:29:05 – 00:16:01:19
Unknown
And so now you just want to go over to your flag layers to click on the flag. And we’re going to go to our objects menu and we’re going to go to pattern and you’re going to want to click Make. Okay, now what this is going to do is bring it up in a separate a separate kind of design screen.

00:16:01:19 – 00:16:28:18
Unknown
Okay? And here you can kind of design it in fine tune exactly where you want the flag to be, to be. You can focus this middle section here because that is going to be your image. So however the flag looks there, that’s how it’s going to look in your patterns. Anything outside of that, it’ll be kind of like duplicate, but we won’t be able to see that any way we work the centerpiece.

00:16:28:18 – 00:17:16:19
Unknown
So I’m not going to change any of that. Just click done. Okay, name your pattern so that you have a name for it in your slots list. I’m just going to some really simple your flag and click done. Okay. And as you can see now, when you look through your list of patterns, you have a flag and now you go back to Eagle and we make our outside frame of our eagle.

00:17:16:19 – 00:18:29:18
Unknown
I like that. And we go to our fill section, fill it with our flag, boom, bada bing. And we. All right, so now we’re going to get into some basic design and positioning of our restaurants. So we’re going to go ahead and speed this process up for you guys. You don’t have to suffer through it again. Fear me just because I’m in control of my own destiny.

00:18:29:20 – 00:19:54:17
Unknown
Show your control by ordering your shirt today like that. Go ahead and get you one of the shirts. Now represent being awakened. Okay, now it’s time to get some words in here. Thank you. Want to try and do more like my T-shirt? I don’t want to actually put 911 on it. So since this is a 20th anniversary, I am going to put a big 20 year behind the Eagle to see what that looks like.

00:19:54:17 – 00:20:29:08
Unknown
As always, let’s go ahead and speed up that design flow of this. Yeah, this is just artistic lip. I can design where you want to put your own in your own t shirt design. And like I said, this was a this is a rough draft was mainly all in my head. And this is why you see a lot of I don’t like it there.

00:20:29:08 – 00:20:58:14
Unknown
I don’t like it here kind of still deciding as I’m rating this shirt how I want it to look. So this is why regions speed through this process. This is on my. Yeah, no, let’s change it back. Let’s go back this way. Well and all right you can to my mind a little bit to me clean up stuff when you have.

00:20:58:14 – 00:21:27:07
Unknown
All right. So we’ve added our 20th Behind the Eagle. Now we’re going to try and put some text along the bottom part where the river used to be and we’ll keep going. We’re almost done there, almost to the finish line. Hang in there just a little bit longer. Okay. Now, I was trying to put some text along the bottom.

00:21:27:07 – 00:22:03:07
Unknown
I think we’re going to try and make it follow a line. So I have my texts on a line pattern. 911 will never forget. I’m still trying out a couple of different aphasia phrases. Not really positive. What I’m going to stick with right now, while I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to put on this line and text style, I am going to use this is what it’s going to say.

00:22:03:07 – 00:23:40:11
Unknown
And I figure that out. Now, I’m not going to make you go through the whole process of watching me figure that out. Let’s deep speed it up and means it’s in front of the Hollywood studio. Whether your project is not easy for filmmakers, photographers and content creators to call this home. So I’m going to be creative and come up with a mainstream entertainment where you create.

00:23:40:11 – 00:24:10:07
Unknown
Okay, so this is now my final outcome. This is it. This is what’s going to break. I have to take a break and just stop designing. Sometimes you just have to take a break. Otherwise you’re going, if something is going wrong, you’ve got to keep trying to fix it, fix it, fix it. And next thing you know, you’re going to end up with a bucket of flour.

00:24:10:07 – 00:24:44:19
Unknown
So we stopped designing. We took a break for a day. We came back and we kept with the same thought pattern, but we did a little bit of more little bit redesigning. That’s not too much of a difference. Right? But this is what’s going to. Okay, so printer wise, we are going to be using my Epson workforce 17, 17 printer.

00:24:45:18 – 00:25:21:11
Unknown
It’s a good printer because it prints all the way from very small to your business cards or print all the way up to that 11 by 17 size. A couple of recommendations. When you are printing with this, it does tend to use up a lot of ink when you’re printing on to inkjet transfer paper. So I suggest if you have a big job to have extra eight cartridges on hand, nothing worse than running out of ink cartridges in the middle of a job.

00:25:21:11 – 00:25:57:16
Unknown
And you can’t get any more until tomorrow morning when the store opens. So make sure you have actually cartridges on hand. All right. Now, we are going to be printing on to the Lake Logan and Jet that paper and we’re going to be using on white clothing and we’re going to be using it for dark clothing. So there’s two different types of inkjet paper to buy for, like clothing and for darkroom.

00:25:57:16 – 00:26:22:12
Unknown
Okay, now, this is the little Logan I’m using for white paper. And you notice it says, I need to bury this. I wrote that on the box because I want to remind myself to mirror these images. I promise you, you’re going to save yourself a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of ripped heat transfer papers.

00:26:22:17 – 00:27:38:15
Unknown
If you if you just mirror the image when you’re printing on white t shirts. Okay, so now we’re going to go ahead and mirror it for on like loading. Remember, you have to mirror it. So let’s go ahead and do that. In Adobe Illustrator, it’s like the whole thing and just rotate it and that’s it. Now we’re going to go ahead and go to print and remember, for Easy Transfer paper, you can use the dark clothing transfer on white or dark clothing, typically pro tip.

00:27:39:15 – 00:28:08:10
Unknown
I like to use the dark clothing on on my white clothes because for one, the paper is a little bit it is a little bit stiffer and it’s a little bit more stretch here and it just feels a lot more durable. The one that’s made for like clothing is very, very thin. Now, reading their instructions is going to tell you, do not merit.

00:28:09:01 – 00:28:46:08
Unknown
You have to bend them one of the corners of your heat transfer paper back and forth until it peels away from the paper. I’ve tried this over and over and over again and I’ve gotten some appeal, but out of the ones I’ve gotten the appeal, let’s say out of ten, seven, I still ripped the image halfway through just because it is paper thin.

00:28:47:11 – 00:29:31:07
Unknown
So you can go ahead and not mirror it and try to get it off of there. Hopefully you made a whole lot of excellence or you’re just really good at peeling them off and I really suck. But I literally tried forever, like. But for now I give up like it’s trying to appeal. But again, used to have this whole page to go gixxer the number one go to spot for location managers and scouts.

00:29:31:22 – 00:31:04:20
Unknown
If you have a cool location or you have a studio or warehouse or a stadium or just open space in space, you want to get more bookings posted on gigs to who knows, it could be your spot in the next blockbuster movie, but you never know unless you hosting gigs there. A better way to book locations. Stop waiting and start hosting with extra black and first, so we have black shirts where you have to do you always have to do free press, okay?

00:31:05:19 – 00:31:48:10
Unknown
You always have to do free press y so that you get rid of all of the discoloration because there’s moisture in the shirt. So you want to get rid of that before you press it. Otherwise you’re going to have a nasty heat press and so you’re in that first chance, about five in your head and then right around it.

00:31:48:16 – 00:32:55:04
Unknown
So I measure this little trick, put the net right in the middle. Okay, so you roll in and. All right, okay. So remember, this is the one for dark clothing, okay? Yeah. I have to test for prints on both sides of the border. So you want to send the corners and. And, like I said, only sort of dark clothes.

00:32:55:20 – 00:33:41:07
Unknown
Does this actually come off pretty easily? The white one? It’s a pain in the butt. Okay, so now you want to pull this off very, very slowly, manning the white one being have four white light on it, have a stain as this and trying to peel this thing off of your right. So like I said, you can go ahead and use this one for white or dark things.

00:33:42:22 – 00:35:03:12
Unknown
Like I said, I actually like to use it better because it is thicker and is more stretchy. It feels right off to the press. And so what I like to do is from the collar, usually about four, four years. You write that right there, just like that. Okay. The wax paper helps the colors pop a little bit. This or go for sit down and you make it let it go for 15 seconds.

00:35:03:12 – 00:36:17:19
Unknown
Clock is right there. So I tried to do a little custom bodywork there when you work out. All right. To just give some to process and take it off. What’s hot in LA? Okay, one quick stretch. Let me go back. All right. Relaxing, nice, stretchy. Oh, gosh. Merry. Got. That’s it. That’s how I was done from start to finish.

00:36:18:23 – 00:37:12:06
Unknown
That was Watch Me Make It Home Together on Sam’s ear, which true. Yeah. Okay. All right. So this is why I’m messed up on as blue on the background. You know, they say you don’t have to mirror these ones either. But like I said, you want to save time, save money. I would go ahead in there because just saw it easier was a come off on the other one.

00:37:13:07 – 00:37:56:11
Unknown
This one does not it does not do it at all. Then when it does, I have time to try and do every one of these and try to show you. I just take my word for it is does not come off of here. All right? It doesn’t feel like a thing. We got to you got to Mark got it to.

00:37:56:11 – 00:38:32:14
Unknown
We got it. Come on, come on, come on now. It’s not going to work anyway. It doesn’t work. Okay? I can’t do it. I’ve been sitting here for like 10 minutes trying to get it off of there. You know, I’ll have time. Okay, so whatever. It does not work. But you take this same thing, right? Four fingers go there.

00:38:32:14 – 00:40:00:21
Unknown
All right. And this does work. And and it works a lot easier than their instructions. So I went through a lot of t shirts and aggravation, trying to do it their way. And I just said, I’m going to email. That’s okay. Now. Right now. All look. Right, come on. So we’re one more time, one more time, 110. I can’t.

00:40:00:23 – 00:42:57:00
Unknown
This must be a cold April and it’s week. Sure. All right. It’s so wrong. So we got to do the wax and then could just launch the freeze and set it on there. We’re not going to press it. She set it on her clothes. It cigarets popped out over, stretched a little bit back. Yeah. This is a non white like that and that’s it.

00:42:57:00 – 00:43:32:13
Unknown
I saw she were folks, thank you for watching. Final thoughts. It’s never going to be perfect, so just do it. I’ll make an excuse not to buy it. Let’s pull up the. It just needs to start now. It’s mainstream entertainment. Don’t forget to like subscribe. Share this video. Tell a friend and we’ll catch you on the next one.

00:43:33:04 – 00:43:41:22
Unknown
Mainstream entertainment.