THE FORGE

Clean DTF prints. No black box. No white haze.

Drop in your art and move the sliders. ToneSmith shows the halftone as you go, builds the white underbase and exports print-ready files. No Photoshop round trips. No outsourcing.Move the sliders, see the halftone live, export print-ready files. No Photoshop round trips.

Start free trialTry the live demo

7 days free · Cancel anytime · Press and hold on the print for a closer look7 days free · Cancel anytime · Hold on the print for a closer look

The original artwork, on its black backgroundThe same artwork separated: halftone dots, the black knocked outOriginalBeforeSeparationAfter
Drag to compare. The shirt follows.

Move a slider. Watch the shirt change.

Dot size from 15 to 85 LPI, any angle, 13 dot shapes. Levels on a real histogram, knockout on any colour, cleanup for stray dots. The preview redraws while you drag, so you set it by eye, not by export and hope. Grab a slider.Dot size, levels and dot shape, redrawn while you drag. Grab a slider.

30 LPI, round dots

The everyday default. Watch the loupe as each setting scans across.

The white underbase builds itself.

Flip one switch and ToneSmith makes the white layer from your art, choked in 0 to 5 px so it never shows past the colour. Export the colour and the white as separate PNGs, or one CMYK TIFF with a white spot channel.

  1. Colour
  2. White underbase, choked 1 px
  3. The shirt

Effects Studio · included

Turn a finished design into a sellable one.

Grit brushes, patina textures, screentone, vintage fades, frames and gradient maps, stacked live on your art. Every layer stays editable, and every edge stays fully on or fully off, so effects never bring the haze back. Tap one.Grit, patina, screentone, frames and gradient maps, stacked live. Tap one.

The City, clean

The art as it came in, separated for the shirt.

Mockup Studio · included

Show the customer before you press a shirt.

155 garment styles from 8 brands, over 3,000 colours, front and back. Send the separation straight from the editor, add a background and your logo, export a client-ready mockup.

  1. Black
  2. Navy
  3. Red
  4. White

Then it prints clean.

The same file going to film: colour, then the white, powder, cure, press, peel. Hard Edges makes every pixel fully on or fully off, and the halo check flags trouble before it reaches the printer.

Gang Sheet Builder · included

Fill the film, not the trash can.

Drop in your designs and Auto Nest packs them onto 12, 13, 22 or 24 inch film, turning them where it saves film. This 22 by 36 inch sheet was packed by the builder itself.

Your art. Your shirt.

Pick a shirt colour. Or drop in your own artwork and watch the real ToneSmith engine separate it, right here in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.

Try your own artOpens the live ToneSmith demo. Free, no sign-up, nothing uploaded.

Your next order, print-ready tonight.

Start free for 7 days. Cancel before day 8 and pay nothing.

Start free trial

Built for garment printing. Not borrowed from a photo editor.

Every control was made for one job: turning a customer's file into a print-ready DTF or DTG separation. These are captures of the live app.

  1. Live previewEvery slider redraws the separation while you drag it. You see the dots before you print a thing.
  2. Halftone controlsDot size from 15 to 85 LPI, any angle from 0 to 45 degrees, 13 dot shapes.
  3. KnockoutClick the background colour and it drops out. Add up to four more colours, or only the ones touching the edge.
  4. LevelsBlack point, white point and gamma over a real histogram of your art.
  5. White underbaseOne switch builds the white layer, choked in 0 to 5 px so it never shows past the colour.
  6. Five viewsOriginal, separation, before and after, mask and underbase. Check every layer before you export.
The ToneSmith editor with the halftone preview beside its controls
The Halftone Screen panel: LPI, angle and dot shape
The Shirt Color panel with the knockout colour picked
The Levels panel with the histogram of the artwork
The Underbase panel with the choke setting
The preview tabs: original, separation, slider, mask and underbase

Five views. One source of truth.

The same tabs you get in the editor, with the same art. Click through them, and turn on the shirt colour to see the print on the shirt.

The original artworkThe halftone separationThe halftone maskThe white underbase

The halftone separation. Turn on the shirt colour to see it on the shirt.

No sign-up needed

Try it live in your browser.

The halftone editor with real art and real controls, the Effects Studio, the Mockup Studio or the gang sheet builder. All four work, free.

Halftone editorEffects StudioMockup StudioGang sheet builder

From artwork to press in four steps.

All in one browser tab. No Photoshop scripts, no saving out and loading back in.

  1. 1

    Drop in your art

    PNG, JPG or WEBP. Remove a background with one click, crop it, and upscale small art to print size at 300 DPI.

  2. 2

    Move the sliders

    Dot size, angle, shape, levels and cleanup, with the preview redrawing as you go. Compare against the original any time.

  3. 3

    Export print-ready

    The separation and its white underbase as separate PNGs, or one CMYK TIFF with a white spot channel for your RIP.

  4. 4

    Gang it, mock it, print it

    Send it to a gang sheet or the Mockup Studio in one click. No saving out and loading back in.

Everything a print shop needs. Nothing it doesn't.

Every control is here because a real print shop asked for it.

Start free trial

  1. Live preview on every slider

    Change the dot size, angle, shape or levels and the preview redraws while you drag. Set it by eye instead of exporting to find out.

  2. White underbase, built for you

    One switch makes the white layer from your art. Choke it in 1 px at a time, 0 to 5 px, so it never peeks past the colour.

  3. No white haze

    Soft edge pixels are what print as haze. Hard Edges makes every pixel fully on or fully off, and the halo check flags trouble before you print.

  4. Print-ready files

    Upscale small art, then export at 300 DPI: separation and underbase as PNGs, the mask on its own, or a CMYK TIFF with a white spot channel.

  5. Photoshop plugin included

    Rather work inside Photoshop? The plugin runs separations there, from the Plugins menu (Photoshop 23 or newer). Every plan, the trial too.

  6. Knockout, levels, cleanup

    Click a colour to knock it out, set black and white points on a histogram, and let cleanup clear the stray dots.

  7. Nothing to install

    The web app runs in your browser and your artwork stays on your computer. Nothing is uploaded to us.

  8. Gang Sheet Builder included

    Auto Nest packs your designs onto 12, 13, 22 or 24 inch film, rotating where it saves film. Big sheets split into tiles.

  9. Mockup Studio included

    155 garment styles from 8 brands and over 3,000 colours, front and back, with backgrounds and your own watermark.

  10. Effects Studio included

    Grit brushes, patina textures, screentone, vintage fades, frames and gradient maps, stacked live and non-destructive.

Plus, the Effects Studio · included

Turn a finished design into a sellable one.

Stack print effects on your art right in the browser: grunge you paint on by hand, worn textures, vintage fades, halftone patterns, frames and gradient maps. Every layer stays editable, and every edge stays fully on or fully off, so effects never bring the haze back.

  • 74 Grit brushes to paint real distress by hand
  • 40 Patina textures and 40 gradient maps
  • 10 Screentone patterns and 6 Throwback looks
  • Frames that wear away the hard edge of a graphic
  • Crisp: one slider to remove semi-transparent pixels
  • Send the result to the editor, a gang sheet or a mockup
Try the Effects Studio demoStart free trial
The design with the Screentone effect
Screentone
The design with the Patina effect
Patina
The design with the Throwback effect
Throwback
The design with the Frames effect
Frames
The design with the Gradient map effect
Gradient map
The design, clean
Clean

Plus, the Mockup Studio · included

Show the customer before you press a shirt.

Send your separation straight from the editor onto a real garment photo. Pick the style and the colour, add a background and your shop logo, and export a client-ready mockup in one go.

  • 155 garment styles from 8 brands
  • Over 3,000 garment colours
  • Front and back, or both in one image
  • Built-in backgrounds plus a photo library
  • Your logo as a watermark
  • Unlimited mockups
Try the Mockup Studio demoStart free trial
A ToneSmith print on a black shirtA ToneSmith print on a navy shirtA ToneSmith print on a red shirtA ToneSmith print on a white shirt

Plus, the Gang Sheet Builder · included

Fill the film, not the trash can.

Drop in your designs and Auto Nest packs them tight, rotating where it saves film. Sheets bigger than your printer can take split into tiles that line up edge to edge.

  • Auto Nest with rotation
  • Background removal on any image
  • Sheet widths of 12, 13, 22 and 24 inches
  • Tiles for oversized sheets, registration marks
  • Save a .gang project and pick it up later
  • Send designs straight from the editor
Try the gang sheet demoStart free trial
A 22 by 36 inch gang sheet with 14 designs packed by Auto Nest
22 × 36 in · 14 designs · Auto Nest

Watch a customer file become a print-ready separation.

Upload to print-ready DTF files, in under three minutes.

If you print on shirts, you have fought these.

Most failed prints are not the printer's fault. They are the artwork's fault: bad masks, bad halftones, no proper underbase. And no amount of expensive ink fixes a bad separation.

The black box
Problem 1The black boxThe transfer comes off with a big dark square round the design. It looks cheap, it wears heavy, and it burns ink on every press.
White haze on every edge
Problem 2White haze on every edgeSoft, feathered edges print a milky white halo. Detail turns grey and gradients smear.
Clean transitions
The fixClean transitionsHalftones and a choked white underbase that blend into the shirt instead of sitting on it. No box, no haze, just the design.

Most shops still do this the hard way.

You took the order and the customer loved the mockup. Then the shirt comes off the platen with a box round the design, or a halo round every soft edge, and it is a reprint. We built ToneSmith so you stop fighting your prep software and start printing.

The old wayThe ToneSmith way
Hours in Photoshop separating every orderDrop the art in, move a few sliders, export
Paying a freelancer to clean up filesClean files from the same tab you took the order in
Masks, channels and curves layers, then fingers crossedA live preview on the shirt colour before anything prints
Film and shirts lost to black boxes and white halosA choked white underbase and edges with no haze
A separate tool for gang sheets and another for mockupsGang Sheet Builder and Mockup Studio included
Hoping the press matches the mockupThe mockup is made from the same separation you print
A separation tool, a gang sheet tool and a mockup tool, each billedAll of it for $7 a month, or $47 a year, or in the FoundryPass

Only black shirts? No, any shirt.

Knock out the background, build a choked white base, export. The same three steps for every shirt colour you stock. These are real ToneSmith separations of the art at the top of this page.

The same design printed on a white shirt
WhiteCrisp halftones with no halo on light shirts.
The same design printed on a black shirt
BlackA choked white underbase. No haze, no box.
The same design printed on a dark colours shirt
Dark coloursKnockout handles navy, forest and maroon cleanly.
The same design printed on a bold colours shirt
Bold coloursReds, oranges and royals. The design blends in, it does not sit on top.

Every shop that prints on fabric.

  • DTF print shopsA white underbase with the right choke, lined up with the colour, every time.
  • DTG operatorsHalftone photo-real and gradient-heavy art without losing the shadows.
  • Custom apparel makersTurn a customer's file into a print-ready separation without opening Photoshop.
  • Designers and freelancersHand the printer files that are ready to go. No more "can you reformat this?" emails.
The Maker Foundry founder

Print-shop owners building tools for print-shop owners.

We are Maker Foundry, and we actually print. Our retail brand Marked & Made is a working personalisation shop running DTF orders every day. We have fought every black box and reprinted every white-haze disaster.

We tried the separation tools out there. Too expensive, too dated, buried in tutorials, or not built for a small shop. So we built our own, first for us, then for the makers we already support.

ToneSmith is the tool we wished we had when we started: fast, modern, honest pricing, no upsell maze. Just clean separations and your time back.

Marked & Made · Maker Foundry · ToneSmith

What printers are saying.

We were paying an outside artist $20 a file just to get clean separations. ToneSmith pays for itself before lunch on most days. The white base just works.
Brandon K.Print shop owner, Austin, TX
ToneSmith is faster, cheaper, and the live preview is night and day. Switched in a week.
Marisol R.Production manager, Miami, FL
First DTF order I prepped with ToneSmith: zero white halo. I checked twice because I didn't believe it. My customer didn't believe it either. Repeat order in 4 days.
Derek H.Owner-operator, Columbus, OH
The Photoshop plugin is the secret. Same controls inside PS as the web app. My designer was up to speed in an hour.
Amanda T.Creative director, Portland, OR
Before ToneSmith, halftones were the part of every order I dreaded. Now it's the part where I close my laptop and go push the press button. Honestly fewer reprints than my old workflow.
Cole M.Print shop owner, Charleston, SC
I run a small home shop and didn't think this was for shops my size. It IS. The free trial got me on day one and I haven't gone back to my old process.
Kayla S.Home-shop DTF printer, Denver, CO

One plan. Honest price. Everything included.

Web app, Photoshop plugin, Effects Studio, Mockup Studio and the Gang Sheet Builder, on one plan. Try it free for 7 days, or pay once for lifetime.

Monthly

Everything in ToneSmith, month to month.

$7/month

  • Unlimited separations and exports
  • Web app + Photoshop plugin
  • Effects Studio, Mockup Studio, Gang Sheets
  • Cancel anytime
Best value

Annual

$3.92 a month, billed yearly. Save 44%.

$47/year

  • Everything in Monthly
  • 44% less than paying monthly
  • Every update as it ships
  • Cancel anytime

Lifetime

Pay once. Yours for as long as ToneSmith exists.

$149once

  • Everything, forever, no renewal
  • Web app + Photoshop plugin
  • All three studios included
  • One-time payment, final sale

The 7-day free trial is on the monthly and annual plans: nothing is charged until day 8, cancel before then and you pay nothing. One trial per person. Lifetime is a one-time payment and a final sale, so try everything in the trial first.

Just want the plugin?

ToneSmith Lite

The ToneSmith Photoshop plugin on its own, with a lifetime license. Every dot shape, angle and LPI, knockout, live preview, cleanup and the white underbase. Plugin only: no web app or studios.

See ToneSmith Lite

More than just software.

Every plan comes with the tools, training and downloads that make your first print better than your last.

Included

LPI test sheet

A dot test grid from 10 to 75 LPI. Print it, press it, or send it to your DTF supplier to see what dot size your setup holds.

Yours after sign-up

Included

Photoshop plugin

Separations inside Photoshop, from the Plugins menu. Install it once through Creative Cloud. Every paid plan, every lifetime tier and the trial.

Download it from your account

Included

Step-by-step training

Short videos for every workflow: uploading, halftones, levels, the white underbase and exporting.

Included in the trial

The guarantee

Cleaner prints, or it's free.

Try ToneSmith free for 7 days. If your prints aren't cleaner, cancel before day 8 and it has cost you nothing. No charge, no quiz, no "are you sure" funnel. Just a cancel button in your account.

Start free trial

Or get them all.

ToneSmith is one of the Maker Foundry apps. FoundryPass unlocks every one of them with a single membership.

Monthly$24/mo
Annual$240/yr
Master Key$419once
  • TumblerForge3D tumbler mockups + laser-ready wraps
  • PatchForgehat patch design, mockups, cut files
  • ToneSmithYou are hereDTF/DTG halftones + Photoshop plugin
  • VectorForgeFree converterany image to laser-ready vectors
  • MappSmithlayered laser maps of anywhere
  • NestSmithFree plantrue-shape nesting: more parts per sheet
  • WorkbenchFree foreverfree laser settings for your machine
  • LinkForgeFree pagelink in bio for makers who sell
  • FontSmithFree fonts8,000+ fonts, every premium one in the pass
See the FoundryPass

7-day free trial on monthly and annual · cancel anytime · the Master Key is one payment, final sale.

Questions before you start?

Do I need Photoshop?

No. The web app does the whole job in your browser: separation, white underbase, export. The Photoshop plugin comes with every plan in case you would rather work inside Photoshop.

How does the free trial work?

Pick a monthly or annual plan and add a card. You get 7 full days with everything unlocked and nothing is charged until day 8. Cancel from your account before then and you pay nothing. One trial per person. Lifetime is a one-time purchase, not a trial.

What files can I upload?

PNG, JPG and WEBP. Small art can be upscaled to print size in the Image Size panel, and every export is set to 300 DPI unless you change it.

Will the files work in my RIP?

Yes. You get the colour separation and the white underbase as separate PNGs that line up, or one CMYK TIFF with a white spot channel. 13 dot shapes, any angle from 0 to 45 degrees, 15 to 85 LPI.

How do I get rid of the white haze?

Haze comes from soft, semi-transparent edge pixels. Turn on Hard Edges and every pixel exports fully on or fully off. The DTF halo check scores your file and points at the problem before it reaches the printer.

Can I cancel anytime?

Yes. Cancel plan is on your account page and takes you straight to the cancel screen. No email, no waiting. You keep access to the end of the period you paid for.

Does my artwork stay private?

Yes. Separations run in your browser. Your artwork is never uploaded to our servers.

Are the Gang Sheet Builder, Mockup Studio and Effects Studio extra?

No. All three come with every web plan at the same price. ToneSmith Lite is the Photoshop plugin on its own and does not include them.

Can I send a separation straight to a gang sheet or a mockup?

Yes. Send to Gang Sheet and Preview in Mockup Studio are right in the editor. No saving out and loading back in.

How big can a gang sheet be?

As long as your printer takes. Sheets too big to export in one piece split into tiles that line up edge to edge.

What is the Effects Studio?

A live, non-destructive editor for finished artwork: grunge, distress, vintage fades, textures, frames and gradient maps. Style it there, then send it to the halftone editor to separate for print.

Will effects cause white haze?

Not when you finish with Crisp: it makes every pixel fully there or fully gone. Grit, Frames and the pattern effects cut on a hard on or off line too.

Is lifetime refundable?

No. Lifetime and ToneSmith Lite are one-time purchases, charged in full at checkout, and final. That is what the free trial is for: try everything on a monthly plan first, then buy lifetime during or after it at the same price.

All questions

Ready to print cleaner separations?

Stop wrestling with halftone scripts. Start printing.

Start free trialTry the live demo

7-day free trial · then $7 a month or $47 a year · or $149 once · or in the FoundryPass

— more from ToneSmith

Everything else this app gives you.

Free tools, libraries and guides — most of it works before you pay for anything.