Solved: Mysterious Padding When Uploading Art to Threadless

I had a issue with uploading my artwork to sell on Threadless, and reached out to their customer support service. What I learned may be known to a lot of people, but it was new to me, and I want to share it with you so your uploads will look their best!

The issue I was having on Threadless was that, for no reason I could discern, sometimes the images I uploaded would cover the product perfectly, and other times it would be shrunk and centred on the product, leaving me to manually scale it up, and sometimes having that scaling undo itself once I tried to subsequently edit the product. Needless to say, it was irritating!

Here is the answer I received from Threadless via email:
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"The issues you're running into may depend on the file format your are uploading. PNG files will work for all our products but will have padding added on all sides so they may not cover the entire item. JPG's created with our set dimensions will print full bleed and cover the entire product without needing to adjust."

Was that really my problem, just using the wrong file extension? What an easy thing to solve!

And it turns out that the Threadless website has a page talking about design placement on non-apparel items, and describes just this issue!:

"While we allow both kinds of files to be uploaded, the way our system handles each one is a bit different. PNGs are great for clothing because they allow for a transparent background and seamless printing into a garment. On non-apparel items, however, this means that the background color would be dictated by the color you select for the design thumbnail. PNGs are also automatically sized and placed for all non-apparel items.
As you can see on the PNG the image gets resized and placed in the center of the product, no matter if it's sized correctly or not. With the JPG the design is allowed to cover the entire design."

I though it was worth bringing this aspect of file preparation to attention because I have been in the habit of reusing a lot of files between multiple print-on-demand websites, especiall Redbubble and Threadless. Redbubble is fine with PNG files, no matter the dimensions, and never adds padding to them. I would often upload these same PNGs onto Threadless. For apparel, that's fine. But now I know how non-apparel files are handled, I'll have to save my Threadless files as JPGs instead. Which does mean more space taken up on my computer, but considering all the benefits of print-on-demand, that's not a big deal.

Are there any litte tips and tricks you want to share about Threadless? Leave a comment and share your wisdom!

Peace, love and sunshine,
​Jessica xx