Changing Line Thickness

Sometimes, the lines contained in a vector image are too thin to withstand the process of silk screen reproduction. This results in them breaking down and the finer detail is lost.

There is a degree of degradation which happens at each stage of the printing process

from artwork to positive
from positive to screen
from screen to printed image.

For this reason the minimum line thickness required for artwork supplied for silk screen printing is 0.17mm or 0.5pt. When the line is a negative image (ie. a white line within a coloured area as shown in the example) the minimum line thickness is 0.35mm or 1pt.

For the purposes of this tutorial we have used thicker lines for clarity. There are two vector shapes in our artwork. We are going to set them at different stroke weights to illustrate varying thicknesses.

We have selected the vector shape on the left hand side using the Select Tool from the Tool Palette - you will see that the bounding box is highlighted in light blue. By clicking on the drop-down menu beside Weight on the Stroke Palette, we can choose 1pt as our stroke (line) thickness.


 

If we repeat the same process on the vector shape on the right hand side, we can now choose 3pt as our stroke (line) thickness. The results can be seen in the example below

 

You can Download this tutorial as a Word Document (Tutorial Line Thickness.doc) or in PDF format (Tutorial Line Thickness.pdf)