ImagesMagUK_January_2021

distort the decoration on curved surfaces like hats, match decoration areas that may not be prepared in some more automated solutions, and skew designs for use in action shots where the garment is not flat or the model’s position means the decoration area is not parallel to the picture plane. Measurement and relative scale can be somewhat difficult with this method, but you can use a portion of the pictured garment with a known measurement, like the width of a placket or pocket, as a scale to judge the relative size of your decoration much like the tools included in some software suites. For example, if a pocket is roughly 10cm in width, you know that your 7.5cm-wide logo should be about 75% the width of the pocket as pictured. This method is fantastic for working with modelled ‘action’ images and handling oddball or customer-supplied garments, though the time investment must be weighed against its utility. Disclaimers and definitions No matter how you produce your mock-ups or preview images, there are some issues with accuracy that are unavoidable. Although you will aim to mitigate problems by making sure you use the most accurate source material and settings possible, some discrepancies between the preview and delivered garments will occur. The best way to handle these issues is to first explain the potential problems to your customer and educate them on these deviations, and second, to provide ways to mitigate them and properly set expectations, with the method depending on the customer’s tolerance and your desired investment in the process. The following issues should always be included in your disclaimers when providing digital previews. Colour Always explain that thread and garment colours will not appear 100% accurate to the finished garment. Even if you calibrated your own equipment to show the colours as closely as possible to physical sample, the monitor, phone, or printer your customer may use to proof will not have identical colour profiles. Not only that, but even the best 3D representations of thread that don’t shift colours are unable to show the depth, fullness of colour, or reflection of light seen in actual thread. For customers who are intent on colour-matching, you may elect to offer physical thread-and-garment samples for an appropriate fee. Size/placement The relative size of the decoration to a given garment as well as its placement on the garment will vary from size to size. Even with the best measurements, your mock-up is likely to be slightly off in placement or in relative scale from the original. Pull/push compensation On small embroidered text the appearance of unevenness in the baseline and top of text placements may need to be addressed. Certainly, you can mitigate this problem somewhat by temporarily zeroing out pull compensation settings in your embroidery software before creating preview images, if you have the native file and are using your own preview image or creating the design manually, but you may not have that option with all tools. If your preview shows a great deal of this unevenness, you may want to add a disclaimer or an education example to your approval info. A final word Presenting preview images and getting preliminary approvals doesn’t have to be painful, but it needs to be handled carefully. Whether preparing images for a customer’s online store or sending out a digital approval packet, try to adopt the eyes of an outsider to the industry and think about the assumptions someone who is unfamiliar with embroidery work might make. These web-based vendor tools allow for custom uploads and a library of one’s own graphics as well as the stock images provided by the vendor. Here, the logo as a transparent PNG has been uploaded, set in place, and scaled to the correct relative size (you should always add the disclaimer that size is not perfectly represented). The width of the woven brand tag was used as a means for determining scale Even budget-friendly tools like Affinity Photo have a mesh-warp feature that makes this work relatively easy. With some practice, the process can be quite quick, particularly on uncomplicated images like this one KB BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT www.images-magazine.com 94 images JANUARY 2021 Erich Campbell is an award-winning digitiser, embroidery columnist and educator, with more than 20 years’ experience both in production and the management of ecommerce properties. He is the programme manager for the commercial division of BriTon Leap. www.erichcampbell.com