How to build a DTF gang sheet: by hand, in Canva or with a builder

A DTF gang sheet is one print file that holds many designs, laid out across the width of your film so as little film as possible is wasted. You can build one by hand in a design app, in Canva, or with a gang sheet builder that nests the designs for you. The steps below are the same either way.

What a gang sheet is

Instead of printing one design per transfer, you fill a strip of film with every design for an order, or for several orders, and cut them apart after pressing. Shops usually sell gang sheets by length on a fixed film width, so a tighter layout means more designs for the same price.

Start with the film width

Ask your printer, or check your own press, for the printable film width. Common rolls are around 30 cm (12 in) and 56–60 cm (22–24 in) wide, but the printable area is often a little narrower than the roll. Set your sheet to the printable width and let the length grow with the designs.

Prepare every design at its print size

1. Size: set each design to the width it will actually print, for example 28 cm for a full front or 9 cm for a left chest.
2. Resolution: aim for about 300 pixels per inch at that size. A 28 cm (11 in) wide design then needs about 3,300 pixels. The effective PPI guide shows the calculation; enlarging a small file does not add real detail.
3. Transparency: every design must be a PNG with a real transparent background. DTF prints anything that is not transparent, including white boxes and soft shadows. The DTF file check covers what to look for.

Space and nest the designs

Leave a small gap between designs so they can be cut apart cleanly; a few millimetres is typical, but follow your shop’s rule. Place large designs first, fill the gaps with small ones, and rotate designs where that saves length. Keep everything inside the printable width, and do not let designs touch the edge of the sheet.

Building a gang sheet in Canva

Canva works for simple sheets if you set it up for print:

1. Create a custom design in pixels: the film width in inches × 300 by the length in inches × 300. A 22 × 24 inch sheet is 6,600 × 7,200 px.
2. Upload your transparent PNGs and size them to their print width using the same 300 px per inch.
3. Arrange them with spacing, then download as PNG with the transparent background option switched on.
4. Open the exported file and check its pixel size and that the background is really transparent before you send it to print.

Canva does not check resolution against print size or nest designs automatically, so the checks above stay your job.

Using a gang sheet builder

A builder does the layout for you: you upload designs, set their sizes and quantities, choose the film width, and auto-layout packs the sheet. Some builders run in a print shop’s own store, so customers build and order sheets themselves. Endorr’s gang sheet builder works that way in Shopify and WooCommerce, and checks every upload for resolution, semi-transparent pixels and thin lines before it reaches the film. See how builders differ in price and features in the gang sheet builder comparison.

Export and check the sheet

Export one PNG at 300 dpi with a transparent background, at the full sheet size. Open it in your RIP and check the white layer preview: Roland describes DTF artwork as a transparent PNG that gets a white layer in the RIP. Look for white showing past the edges of designs and for fine details that disappear. Adobe’s note that enlarging placed images lowers their effective resolution applies to every design on the sheet. For a new design style, press a test before running the whole sheet.