Exciting new designs based on photographs, paintings or just about any digital image are now hitting fashion world thanks to recent advances in digital printing.

Screenprinting, the standard design-printing technique, has many limitations: Artisans are required to engrave prints; Dyes can only be placed one color at a time, and a single order can take weeks.

Now, with digital printing, none of these limitations apply: A whole image on fabric, as on paper.

While forms of digital printing have been used for years on T-shirts and bags, the ink tended to run, and edges printed fuzzily.

Today’s inks and printers have  improved to the extent that enduring, crisper looking prints can be created more cheaply and faster than screen printing.

Fashion labels using digital printing include Helmut Lang, Zac Posen and Valentino.

They are pushing boundaries to explore custom made fabrics and new kinds of prints that resemble artwork more than printed t-shirts.

The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article on the topic.

The above photo from the WSJ article shows how Akris designer, Albert Kriemler, used a photo of mountains and their reflection for the Fall 2010 collection.