Entry of AI-Driven Image Generation in Textile and DTG Printing

16 July 2024: H. A. Emran Seahan, CEO of Color Craft, Dhaka, Bangladesh explains how it is making everything simpler and more exciting by ensuring quality artwork that matches market needs.

For years, T-shirts have ruled the global fashion scene, with chest prints taking a big slice of the pie. Enter DTG (direct-to-garment) technology, adding a burst of vibrancy and colour to consumer demand. In my professional journey, I’ve noticed a significant gap in quality artwork that matches market needs. Both buyers and manufacturers feel this shortfall. But now, AI-driven image generation and digital technology are bridging this gap, making everything simpler and more exciting !

To ensure top-notch product quality, manufacturers usually conduct a pilot production run of 200 to 250 pieces before diving into large batches of 50,000 to 100,000 pieces. However, due to current consumer demands, this number has dropped to 500 to 1,000 pieces per style, making it time-consuming and costly for manufacturers. This is where creating quality artwork quickly becomes a game-changer. With today’s technology, it’s possible to produce 50 to 100 high-quality artworks in a single day and buyers can even have 500 unique designs printed on 500 T-shirts.

While controlling AI output can be challenging, it’s not impossible. By combining a deeper understanding of the process with intricate manual and automated controls, we can create a series of artworks in a consistent style. This is where my solution shines.

Here’s a brief representation of what can be achieved with series artwork for t-shirt printing. Consumers can proudly wear unique T-shirts, sparking a new wave of vibrant fashion worldwide !

AI image generators have been brewing up a storm for almost two years. AI-generated images have been impossible to miss. They’re everywhere, and it’s easy to see why: the tools necessary to make them are now good – and available to the public.

There’s a reason that AI image generators have become incredibly popular over the past two years: before that, they were pretty bad. The technology underlying them was incredibly cool and impressive, at least to research scientists, but the images they could output were underwhelming. Tools that have you upload a dozen of your photos and then spit out AI-generated portraits are fun (and normally built using Stable Diffusion).

Thanks to recent developments in AI, image creation has never been easier. With various tools available for text-to-image generator, everybody can create images from scratch regardless of their skill and experience. All it takes is a short text prompt. Imagine the possibilities for AI-generated images: for creators and marketers looking to stand out with original content, as well as for anyone who felt held back by artistic ability. The possibilities for creative empowerment are truly endless with the AI image creator.

How AI Image Generators Work …
All these AI image generators take a text prompt and then turn it – as best they can – into a matching image. This opens up some wild possibilities, since your prompt can be anything. Whether you want to generate images of animals, objects or even abstract concepts, image creator can produce accurate depictions that meet your expectations. It is highly efficient, user-friendly, and cost-effective.

Most AI image generators work in a pretty similar way. Millions or billions of image-text pairs are used to train a neural network (basically, a very fancy computer algorithm modelled loosely on the human brain) on what things are. By allowing it to process near-countless images, it learns what dogs, the colour red, vermeers, and everything else are. Once this is done, you have an AI that can interpret almost any prompt – though there is a skill in setting things up so it can do so accurately.

The next step is to actually render the AI-generated image. The latest generation of AI image generators do that using a process called diffusion. In essence, they start with a random field of noise and then edit it in a series of steps to match their interpretation of the prompt.

Experience and Expertise …
H. A. Emran Seahan, CEO of Color Craft, Dhaka, Bangladesh has over 35 years of experience in textile screen printing, DTG printing, spot colour separation, and design wizardry. Helping clothing brands get the absolute best output in their screen printing, he is also award-winning t-shirt designer.

+880 1713 009800 / emranseahan@yahoo.com