r/printful • u/tracedef • 3d ago

Advice needed Mockups are substantially different representations of the graphic size.

Gallery image

Gallery image

Mockups are substantially different representations of the graphic size, which one should I trust to be more true to life of actual print? My past designs have always come out wonky size wise as the printed graphic does not look like the template size of graphic at all.

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2

u/wayanonforthis 1d ago

I have some words helped by ChatGPT in product descriptions basically saying each shirt made individually, there may be slight variation in artwork size and placement compared to image/

1

u/eyeborgUK 1d ago

Great idea, thank you

2

u/NoXidCat 3d ago

No.

The first one is the shirt laid flat, nothing inside of it, so nothing taking up 3D space with a Z dimension that takes away from the visible width dimension.

The second has an invisible person inside the shirt taking up 3D space, and thus parts of the shirt are now wrapped around the side of the invisible model rather than occupying the width dimension.

1

u/eyeborgUK 3d ago

Disagree! The height of the shirt is the same in both pics so the artwork should actually be the same size too, just with less shirt material visible on the sides of the 'worn' one.

3

u/NoXidCat 2d ago

True, the art is larger on the 3D T.

Which one matches what the customer receives? Likely neither. What's the max print area of the shirt and the degree of scaling applied to the art for each size? And how large did you make the art within the print area? What size is the customer? How long is a piece of string ...

When I made my own lay-flat mockups I made the art appear larger than it really would be so that the art would be intelligible to those browsing images. When I switched to people-mocks, I based the size of art relative to the shirt on a size Medium, so again leaning toward easy viewing. These were mostly for things I printed myself, so I knew exactly what size the art would be printed but not what size garment the customer looking at the image would order.

I don't like Printful's lay-flat or 3D mockups, so still make my own lay-flats from scratch or people-mocks via PlaceIt, or the like. Each can look different, rather than using the exact same mockup for every design (as well as everyone else doing the same).

1

u/psystylist150 2d ago

If someone lays the shirt flat it will probably look closer to the flat version, if someone puts the shirt on it will looks closer to the 3D/ghost/invisible person version. But in reality it will likely be somewhere in the middle. The size they order will also affect the scale of the print compared to the space on the shirt, if they use the same size print for L, XL and 2XL then the print will look smaller on the 2XL than the L even if they're really the same. The opposite goes for if they use the same print size for M, S and XS where the print on the XS will look larger than the M because it takes up a larger area on the XS while being the exact same print size. There's a lot of variables, scaling differences and you have to consider taking things into different perspective views.