You own the printer. The gang sheet shouldn’t be the slowest machine in the shop.

DTF prepress for shops that print in-house: the layout, the white and the export handled at the bench — before the RIP, not inside it.

The situation

What this bench actually deals with.

An in-house DTF shop touches the same four jobs on every batch: get the client files in, pack the roll, get the white right, and write a file the RIP accepts. None of these is hard once. All of them are expensive when they repeat forty times a day through a raster editor and a folder of export presets.

NestSheet is the bench where those four jobs happen in one pass, in the browser, with the film math on screen. It does not print, it does not RIP, it does not take orders — it turns the folder your orders arrived in into the file your press runs.

The layout eats the operator

Packing mixed artwork by hand is judgement work at the start of the day and endurance work by the afternoon — and the film pays for every shortcut.

White is invisible until it isn’t

A halo you only discover on pressed fabric is the most expensive kind of proofing. The white channel needs to be a previewed decision, not a print-time surprise.

The RIP is picky and it’s right to be

Wrong channel names, wrong colour space, flattened spots — every “fix the file first” round trip is minutes with the press idle.

Step 1 · Upload

Drop the order folder as it came in.

Ten formats — PNG, JPEG, TIFF, WebP, PSD, PSB, EPS, AI, PDF, SVG — up to 500 MB a file. CMYK inputs are normalised to sRGB with their embedded ICC respected; low-DPI files get flagged in the rail instead of surprising you on film.

NestSheet files rail after a mixed upload: clean 300 dpi files with green dots, a 72 dpi phone photo flagged “DPI too low” and a 170 dpi file flagged “Low DPI”, each with a Review button
The files rail after a real mixed upload: green dots for clean files, quiet flags for the two that need a look.

Step 2 · Nest

The packer does the Tetris on your roll width.

Auto-nest is on by default: rotation 0/90°, your gap and margin (2 mm / 5 mm defaults), auto sheet height, roll presets from 300 to 1800 mm. Film length, m² and fill stay on screen, so the cost of a layout is never a surprise.

NestSheet builder with a 43-piece order auto-nested on a 600 mm DTF roll, files rail on the left and film readout at the bottom
43 pieces from ten files, auto-packed on a 600 mm roll — 0.31 m of film for this batch.

Step 3 · White

See the white channel before it hits film.

Alpha-derived white with choke 0–10 px (default 2), alpha threshold, standard or soft-hand modes and halftones — with a draggable before/after split of the exact channel the RIP will receive.

White Underbase Lab in the Prep terminal: mode toggle, white amount, choke 2 px and alpha threshold sliders, before/after split of the generated white channel on black
The White Underbase Lab: choke, threshold and mode tuned against the actual artwork, not a swatch.

Step 4 · Export

Write the file your RIP expects, first try.

Nineteen recipes across TIFF (up to CMYK + 4 white + 4 varnish), PNG, PSD/PSB with real spot channels and PDF. Six RIP presets in the box — MainTOP, CadLink Digital Factory, AcroRip, PhotoPRINT, SAi Flexi, Generic DTF — and every channel name editable.

NestSheet export dialog with TIFF format, CMYK colour, four white channels, embedded ICC profile dropdown, mirror toggle and W1–W4 channel name fields
Export with Advanced open: TIFF · CMYK + 4 white, ICC picker, channel naming your RIP recognises.

What it costs

Which plan fits this shop.

Monthly allowances are measured in the square metres you actually export — 1 standard sheet ≈ 0.5 m². No per-order commission, no per-computer licence. Full allowance table on the pricing page.

Free

$0

30 m²/mo · about 60 average sheets

Starter

$49/mo

100 m²/mo · about 200 average sheets

Pro

$149/mo

500 m²/mo · about 1000 average sheets

Studio

$399/mo

2500 m²/mo · about 5000 average sheets

FAQ

The practical questions.

Does NestSheet replace my RIP?
No — it feeds it. NestSheet handles prepress (layout, white, varnish, export) and writes TIFF/PSD/PNG/PDF for the RIP you already run. Colour management, screening and printer control stay in the RIP.
What if a client file arrives broken?
The Prep terminal fixes the common production problems in place: remove background, fix invisible pixels, colour knockout, fringe doctor, halftone, and the White Underbase Lab — as a reversible stack that never touches the original upload.
Where do my exports live?
Processing happens on EU servers (Germany). Every render sits in your export history for 72 hours — re-download the exact file the press ran, then it is deleted on schedule.

Run it on your own orders.

Take this afternoon’s real batch, run it through the free plan, and judge the exported file in your own RIP.

TIFF · PNG · PSD spot channels · PDF 6 RIP presets in the box Free forever · no card