AI art sucks & I can’t stop using it
Unlock your shop’s artists with these AI tips
By Cole Lundstrom
I went to college for visual art — quite possibly the least practical degree known to man. I spent my days drawing, painting, and criticizing Rauschenberg. During that time, I never could have imagined the art that I loved being remixed millions of times a day by AI. I was still stealing Photoshop 6 back then, and it took hours to create a quality design for a business. Today, after running print shops for 15 years, I must admit that I use AI art all the time. It may not be as soulful as the real thing, but it can absolutely make you money.
For the right client, we still love building a custom illustration from the ground up. There is nothing better than crafting something original with intention. But most clients do not need a week-long art process. They need fast ideation, clear options, and momentum. That is what AI allows us to deliver them on the same day.
AI allows us to move from creating to curating. Here is my audit of the tools we are using right now, how to prompt them for actual printing, and how to bridge the gap from a digital image to a soft-hand retail print.
"It may not be as soulful as the real thing, but it can absolutely make you money."
Image courtesy of Cole Lundstrom
The AI image generator wars
Not all AI is created equal. Some are photorealistic beauty queens, and some are great at Studio Ghibli for some reason.
Midjourney: The aesthetic powerhouse
If you want a design that looks like it belongs in a high-end retail boutique or on a streetwear shelf, Midjourney is the king. It has the most soul and produces textures that do not look like generic clip art.
The good: Unbeatable artistic style. It understands lighting grit and complex illustrations better than anything else.
The bad: It lives inside Discord, which is a clunky interface. It also struggles with specific text, though it is getting better.
Shop use case: Use this for vibe designs where the art carries the weight and the text is secondary.
OpenAI DALL-E3: The mind reader
DALL-E 3 built into ChatGPT is remarkably good at following instructions. If a client gives you a very specific weird list of elements, DALL-E will actually include all of them.
The good: Incredible prompt adherence. If you ask for a squirrel wearing a welding mask holding a wrench with the text “Nuts and Bolts” in a bold font, you will actually get exactly that.
The bad: The art can sometimes feel a bit plastic or like generic stock 3D renders if you are not careful with your prompts.
Shop use case: Perfect for quick idea boards to show a client who has a very specific vision but needs to see it to believe it.
Adobe Firefly: The safe & legal route
Firefly is built into Photoshop and Illustrator. Its text to vector feature in Illustrator is a game changer for screen printers.
The good: It is trained on Adobe Stock, meaning you do not have to worry about copyright ghosts in your art. Plus, it generates actual vector paths.
The bad: It is currently more conservative and less creative than Midjourney. It will not give you that edgy distressed look as easily.
Shop use case: Great for creating simple icons, shapes, and flat vector elements that you need to be able to scale infinitely.
Nano Banana: The speed demon
This is a newer player in the T-shirt space often discussed for its sheer speed and garment-first focus.
The good: It is lightning fast. It is built to churn out variations that look like T-shirt graphics rather than just paintings.
The bad: It might lack the deep fine art complexity of a high-end Midjourney render.
Shop use case: Use this during a live consultation. You can literally show a client options while they are on the phone.
Prompting for printers
The biggest mistake shop owners make is being too vague with AI prompts. If you want a print-ready design, you have to prompt for it. Here are three gold-standard prompt tips we use.
- Define the background. Always add “isolated on white background” or “flat white background.” This makes the eventual background removal for DTF or screen separations ten times easier. Several of the tools can also output with PNG if you request a transparent background.
- Define the style. Instead of “cool bear” try “flat vector style thick lines limited color palette screen print aesthetic vintage 1980s national park patch style California bear.” By telling the AI to use limited colors and thick lines, you are essentially doing the prep work for your screen separations before the art is even born.
- The aspect ratio. In Midjourney, always use the aspect ratio command for vertical rectangles. T-shirts are not squares. Don’t waste pixels on a square image that won’t fit a standard chest print.
Making it print ready
OK, so you have your AI slop, and you are ready to make it a real print. If you are a screen printer, you need vectors or separations. If you are doing DTF, you need to solve the plastic shield problem.
The vector connector
When we get a killer design out of Midjourney we immediately run it through Vectorizer.AI. Unlike the Image Trace feature in Illustrator, which often turns art into a jagged mess, Vectorizer.AI uses neural networks to create smooth mathematical paths. It is the difference between a design that looks okay and one that looks professional. If we still are unhappy with the results, we turn to our friends at SepsArtDept.com for hand-done image tracing by a real life human.
The DTF soft hand secret: The Marcotte method
If you are printing AI art via DTF you know the struggle. Large solid blocks of ink feel like a heavy sticker. This is the No. 1 complaint clients have with DTF.
To solve this, we have been looking at tools like the ScreenPrintGPT halftone actions developed by Matt Marcotte. Matt is a veteran in our industry who realized that AI-generated art needs a production bridge. His tool allows you to take a solid AI image and, with one click, knock out the shirt color and apply a halftone pattern.
Why does this matter? It punches holes in the print. It allows the garment to breathe, makes the print feel incredibly soft, and most importantly, it handles those soft glows and fades that usually look terrible in DTF. It turns a digital AI creation into a retail-ready garment.
"AI has not replaced our artists. It has unlocked them."
Image generated using AI
Do this tomorrow
If you want to integrate this into your shop tomorrow, do not overcomplicate it. Follow this three-step plan.
Step 1. The next time a client asks for a design, do not open Photoshop. Open Midjourney or ChatGPT. Spend 15 minutes generating three distinct styles based on their request. Send those to the client as concept proofs.
Step 2. Once they pick a direction, run that high-res image through Vectorizer.AI if you need it for screen printing or Stahls ART AI Assist if you are doing DTF to ensure the line weights are thick enough to hold powder.
Step 3. If it is a DTF job, use a halftone action like the one from Marcotte to give it that premium feel. If it is screen printing, use a tool like InkSplit to pull your color separations automatically.
Just one more thing
At Merch Troop, AI has not replaced our artists. It has unlocked them. It has removed the grunt work of building designs to just be rejected and allowed us to focus on what we do best — which is delivering killer products that clients love. AI has also unleashed the creativity of our salespeople as they are no longer held back by their lack of art skills and can instead start designing anything they can imagine. Hours of art headaches are now gone. You just have to be willing to pick up the tools.
Cole Lundstrom is the founder of MerchTroop.com, specializing in live event apparel activations for brands and experiential marketing. With 16 years in the print industry, he’s now launching PrintShopCRM.com, a workflow and automation platform built specifically for print shops to scale smarter and operate more profitably.
