Gradient

A gradient blends one color into another, or into transparency, across a continuous range with no visible steps — trivial for a monitor to display since it just varies the light output pixel by pixel. A screen printing press can't do that directly; it needs the fade rebuilt as a halftone, breaking the smooth blend into dot patterns that shrink and grow to fake the transition from full ink coverage down to bare shirt.

For a buyer, this is where a design that renders perfectly in Photoshop or Canva runs into real press limits — a sunset fade or a soft drop shadow needs a dedicated halftone separation, and each visible step of that fade adds complexity a solid-color logo never had. We've had customers submit a gradient logo expecting a flat two-color quote, only to learn the fade alone needed its own halftone treatment and a mesh count fine enough to hold it.

Pros ask how many distinct color stops a gradient actually needs before quoting, since a two-tone fade halftones cleanly on a standard mesh while a rainbow gradient across a full design edges toward simulated process or four-color separations. Fabric matters too — a gradient that reads smooth on a fine ringspun tee can band or look chunky on coarse fleece where dot gain spreads more.

Buyers commonly assume a gradient prints exactly as smooth as it looks on a phone screen. In ink, it's always dots doing the blending, and a screen printer can only hold a gradient as fine as the mesh, LPI, and fabric allow — push those limits and a smooth fade turns into visible banding instead.