# T-Shirt Design Workshop 3: Photos & Type in Procreate App, Photoshop, and Illustrator - review & insight | Gareth B. Davies Source: https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/t-shirt-design-workshop-3-photos-and-type-in-procreate-app-photoshop-and-illustrator/ [← All courses](https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/) Illustration & Drawing · Solid intro · Rated 7 /10 # T-Shirt Design Workshop 3: Photos & Type in Procreate App, Photoshop, and Illustrator By Gareth B. Davies · Updated July 2026 Ray Dombroski Intermediate · 72 min A 72-minute walkthrough of one photo-to-tee design across Photoshop, Illustrator, and Procreate, built on real production habits rather than theory. [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Ft-shirt-design-workshop-3-photos-and-type-in-procreate-app-photoshop-and-illustrator%2F2015504452) New to Skillshare? Your first month is free, enough to take this course at no cost. ## What the workshop actually covers This is the third installment in a series, and it plays like a condensed studio session rather than a tutorial built from scratch for newcomers. The teacher works through a single project from start to finish: turning a phone photo of a vintage Ford Bronco into a full front-of-shirt graphic with type, logos, and hand-drawn texture. The arc moves in a straight line: tools and setup, Pinterest research, thumbnail sketching in a paper notebook, image prep in Photoshop, type layout in Illustrator, hand-finishing in Procreate on an iPad Pro, then a return to Photoshop to flatten everything into print-ready spot colors. Nine lessons in just over an hour means each stage gets only a few minutes, so depth varies a lot by topic. The Photoshop segment is the strongest stretch of the course. It walks through pulling the red, green, and blue channels from a photo to find the one with the most contrast, then uses threshold adjustments and layer masks to carve a clean silhouette out of a messy background, patching in details like a tire or an exhaust pipe by blending two threshold passes. A vector clipping path drawn with the pen tool cleans up the edges further, and body color gets painted in on separate layers set to multiply. It is a genuinely useful method for anyone turning snapshots into flat printable art, and it is explained with enough step-by-step clarity that a viewer could follow along on their own image. The Illustrator and Procreate sections are looser. Illustrator covers building type around an ellipse, applying arc warps, adjusting vertical tracking for stacked lettering, and pulling in Typekit fonts, all shown through trial and error as the instructor auditions different typefaces on screen. Procreate gets even less structure: the course explicitly says it will not be a deep dive, and instead shows quick gestural moves like rotating the canvas, dragging color fills, and hand-tracing over vector type to rough up its edges. Anyone hoping for a real Procreate primer will come away with only a handful of isolated tricks. ## Strengths and limitations The final Photoshop lesson, where the finished artwork gets separated into black, blue, and tan layers using an alpha channel and threshold pass, is a practical detail that many design courses skip entirely. It shows exactly what a print shop needs and why layering discipline during the design phase makes that separation possible later. Where the course falls short is pacing and assumed knowledge. Tool names, keyboard shortcuts, and menu paths fly by quickly, and there is no acknowledgment for anyone unfamiliar with layer masks, clipping paths, or the pen tool. The opening tools-and-materials section, covering notebooks, pens, and a standing desk, also eats time that could have gone toward the software work the course promises. The result is a class that documents an experienced designer's real workflow well, but functions better as a study of technique for someone already fluent in the software than as an entry point for someone learning it. The standout The Photoshop technique of pulling the highest-contrast channel from an RGB photo and refining it through threshold adjustments and layer masks turns an ordinary phone snapshot into clean, screen-print-ready line art. ## What you will learn - · How to source and curate design references on Pinterest boards organized by style, subject, and project - · How to convert a phone photo into a high-contrast, print-ready silhouette using channel selection, threshold adjustments, and layer masks in Photoshop - · How to draw a clean vector clipping path around a photographed object using the pen tool - · How to build and warp custom type layouts in Illustrator using Typekit fonts, arcs, and vertical tracking - · How to hand-rough digital type and add painted texture in Procreate to break up overly clean computer-generated edges - · How to isolate a multi-layer file into flat spot colors using alpha channels and threshold, in preparation for screen printing Best for: Designers already comfortable with Photoshop and Illustrator who want to see a working professional's photo-to-print pipeline and pick up specific technical shortcuts. Skip it if: Complete beginners to Photoshop or Illustrator, since the pace assumes fluency with layers, masks, paths, and menus and never explains basic tool locations. Engaging Teacher Organization of Lessons Clarity of Instruction Helpful Examples [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Ft-shirt-design-workshop-3-photos-and-type-in-procreate-app-photoshop-and-illustrator%2F2015504452)