Direct-to-film

DTF gang sheets at 92–96% packing density

Mixed-size artwork packed tight on film, correct white under-base with per-job choke, and RIP-ready output the first time — no second export step.

Direct-to-film printing is the most file-intensive workflow in the print-on-film industry. A typical DTF shop touches 40-120 unique artworks per day, each of them needing to be scaled, nested, white-under-based, and exported in the format whatever RIP the shop runs is expecting. The difference between a well-tuned pre-press pipeline and an ad-hoc one is not a small percentage — it is the difference between a shop that ships on time at a healthy margin and a shop that is perpetually running the operator into overtime.

Three decisions dominate the economics. First: packing density on the gang sheet. Every point of sheet utilisation lost is money back to the film supplier. Second: white channel accuracy. A choke that is too tight shows colour halo; a choke that is too loose shows white halo around the artwork, and both are customer-visible rejects. Third: RIP output format. The TIFF the pre-press tool writes must be the TIFF the RIP ingests without a second export step — the moment a designer has to "fix the file in Photoshop first", the pipeline is broken.

NestSheet was designed around these three decisions specifically, not as a side effect of being a general-purpose image editor.

What shops optimise for

Sheet utilisation — 70 % packing versus 92–96% packing is the difference between healthy margin and a break-even shop on the same order volume.
White-layer accuracy — spread, choke, variable-dot coverage and per-job override without digging through five dialog boxes.
RIP compatibility without a second export step — the TIFF you save is the TIFF the RIP ingests.

What NestSheet does for it

✓ Packs mixed artwork at typical 92–96% utilisation on any roll width from 30 cm to 120 cm.
✓ Generates the white channel from alpha with a configurable choke and your own profile for the spread amount.
✓ Writes CMYK+W TIFF with embedded ICC exactly how the downstream RIP expects it.
✓ Splits multi-sheet orders on gutter lines, never through artwork, with a manifest for reorders.

Compatible RIPs

MainTOP, Cadlink Digital Factory, AcroRIP, Roland VersaWorks, Mimaki RasterLink, SAi Flexi, Onyx, ColorLogic ZePrA, Fiery — plus Wasatch SoftRIP and Mutoh VerteLith expanding

Materials

DTF film (PET hot-peel and cold-peel), all common powder adhesives, 4+W, 6+W, CMYK+FP configurations