How to Make Cool Photo T-Shirts

My favorite Web-based custom T-shirt shop is Zazzle.com, because it has the easiest-to-use creation tools and has a high-quality product. Just mosey on over, click the "Create" button at the top of the page, and give it a whirl.

I'm not going to go over the steps in detail, because Zazzle is pretty intuitive and has a good help section. I'll just point out the highlights and give you a few tips.

Seeing is believing. The coolest thing is that they have a number of models, and you can see how your t-shirt design is going to look on an actual human wearing the exact style of shirt you've selected.

With photos, you want to use a white shirt, because the color of the T-shirt will show in all the light-colored areas. So if you have a photo that includes white fluffy clouds, they'll be yellow fluffy clouds if you pick a yellow shirt!

If you choose a "dark T-shirt," however, they use a different process, and there's no show-through. White is white, even on a black shirt. It costs more, though.

Selecting a Photo. Zazzle's printing process doesn't have super-high resolution or super sharpness, but usually you don't want people sticking their noses into your T-shirts to see the fine details anyway. You're probably better off with a close-up than a panoramic shot, and the bolder and more vivid the image, the better.

Of course, the main thing is that the photo should mean something to you.

White Backgrounds are Good. If you're going with a white shirt, photos that have a white background are nice, because it avoids the "big rectangle" effect that most photos have: the white background merges with the T-shirt and the eye is drawn to the (non-white) subject of the photo, not the big rectangle. You can also get this effect with masking, if you're good with photo editors.

And that's about all there is to it! Once you've uploaded your photo, you can move it around on the shirt until you like the looks of it.

You can also add text. I cover text-based T-shirts in a different Squidoo lens. You'll pick up some useful tips there.

Once everything's the way you like it, you save the design, and then all you have to do is pick a size, give Zazzle.com some money, and they'll send you a shirt!