Why halftone a DTF file at all?
Because DTF shops ask for artwork without partial transparency. T-shirt.ca’s DTF artwork requirements say “for best results, avoid translucent, semi-transparent, or low-opacity elements” and ask for 300 dpi at the printed size on a transparent background (source, checked 16 October 2026). Transfer Superstars, another DTF printer, writes that with semi-transparent pixels the printer “adds a solid white base to compensate” and that transparent images “will not print correctly with DTF unless they are halftone” (source, checked 16 October 2026).
A halftone keeps the look of a fade with pixels that are all fully opaque or fully transparent: dense dots where the fade is strong, sparse small dots where it is faint. Check your printer’s own rules too, since shops differ.
How the transparency becomes dots
The opacity of each pixel decides how much of its dot cell is filled. Opaque art and empty background are left alone.
| Pixel in your PNG | In the halftone PNG |
|---|---|
| Fully opaque | Unchanged, same colour, same edge |
| Fully transparent | Unchanged, empty |
| 75% opacity | Big dots covering about 75% of the area |
| 25% opacity | Small dots covering about 25% of the area |
| Below Clear below | Removed |
| Above Solid above | Filled solid |
The first two rows hold when the halftone keeps the pixel size of your PNG. A different print width or dpi resizes the art first, and the resized edges of solid shapes become a ring of dots as well; to avoid that, export the PNG at the print size and 300 dpi before you drop it.
Dots take the colour of the art under them. Because the screen is compared with each pixel separately, a dot that sits on the edge of opaque art merges into it rather than leaving a gap.
How big are the dots?
It depends on the lines per inch (LPI) and the tone. For round dots, the diameter of a dot that covers a share of its cell is the dot spacing × √(4 × share ÷ π):
| LPI | Dot spacing | 10% dot | 25% dot | 50% dot |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 | 1.02 mm | 0.36 mm | 0.57 mm | 0.81 mm |
| 35 | 0.73 mm | 0.26 mm | 0.41 mm | 0.58 mm |
| 45 | 0.56 mm | 0.20 mm | 0.32 mm | 0.45 mm |
| 55 | 0.46 mm | 0.16 mm | 0.26 mm | 0.37 mm |
For comparison, T-shirt.ca asks for lines and small details of at least 0.5 mm. That is about 6 pixels at 300 dpi. The faint end of a fade makes the smallest dots, so if you want to stay above a minimum size, raise Clear below until the faintest dots are gone in the close-up, or choose a lower LPI so every dot is bigger.
Halftone or remove the semi-transparent pixels?
Both get rid of partial transparency. They suit different art:
- Halftone when the soft parts are part of the design: shadows, glows, smoke, faded edges, gradients into the shirt. The fade survives as dots.
- Remove them when the soft pixels are only the anti-aliased edge of solid shapes and text, or a stray low-opacity haze. Making each pixel either solid or empty keeps the art clean without adding a dot texture. The remove semi-transparent pixels tool does that.
What this tool does not do
- It does not add the white underbase or build the gang sheet; your printer or RIP software does that.
- It does not mirror the image. Check whether your shop wants mirrored artwork or not.
- It does not unmix colours from a background. The knock-out removes colours near the shirt colour and fades the ones close to it; it does not work out what the art looked like under a coloured glow.
- It reads PNG, JPG, WebP, GIF, BMP and AVIF. To start from a
.procreatefile, turn it into a PNG with the converter first.
For one-ink shading, such as a black-and-white photo for a screen-printed shirt, use the halftone generator, which has the same tool set up for shading.