Save material or ink and make better transfers by letting the shirt do some of the work. Let me show you exactly how to knockout the shirt color in Silhouette Studio.
Launch Silhouette Studio and import your image by going to File > Merge. For high resolution PNG files, I think Merge works better than dragging and dropping.
When you knock out the color of your shirt (or bag, or whatever you're decorating), you're creating natural breathing room in your transfer. I ended up printing this as a DTF transfer, but if you were printing with a white toner printer or using inkjet printable heat transfer the same rules apply. You're saving ink, creating better stretchability and flexibility and/or helping to prevent cracking in your transfers.
The key to knocking out a specific color is tracing, but before you do that I would suggest you take one extra step. By going to the Send panel and turning off the cut lines (set cut lines to "No Cut") you're going to limit the amount of data processing. This will help you software run faster.
Return to the Design area and open the Trace tool.
Click "Trace by Color" (middle tab on the Trace panel).
Use your mouse to click directly on the color you want to remove - in this case black.
Change the settings from "Single Area" to "All Areas" so it selects ALL the black in your design, not just one spot.
Then increase the tolerance a bit if you see thin areas (like text) that aren't completely filled with the yellow shading. You don't want to go TOO high or it'll blur the edges, but you need enough to capture all the black.
Click "Trace" when you're happy with the amount of yellow. A cut line will be generated at the end of each yellow shaded area.
The yellow will disappear and red cut lines will be (barely) visible.
Open the Modify panel on the left side. Select everything (both the original design and the new cut lines you just made), then click Subtract.
The black will be removed!
You'll most likely see lots of individual bounding boxes now. Right-click and select "Group" to group everything back together.
At this point you're design is reading for printing, but if you want to see what this will look like on a black shirt you can get a really good idea in Studio by changing the Media Color from white to black. The areas you knocked out are now black because the black from the media is showing through just like it will on your shirt!
Note: This post may contain affiliate links. By clicking on them and purchasing products through my links, I receive a small commission. That's what helps fund Silhouette School so I can keep buying new Silhouette-related products to show you how to get the most out of your machine!
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