Photographic images using a heat press?

[Magic7]

Hi guys and girls, first post, so go easy:redface:

I'm aiming to produce Christian t-shirts using a heat press. The prints I have in mind fall into two categories:

1) vector graphics (with just two or three colours) of basic symbols and slogans.
2) digital photographs of landscapes, nature etc, with Bible verses.

The former would seem to be pretty straightforward, and so the first, most obvious question needing answered is: is it even possible to print digital colour images onto fabric using a basic heat press set-up?
I've searched extensively and have seen good results (on youTube) using black and white images, but not colour.

Is this a goer or should I forget about printing digital images and just do vectors?

cheers, magic7

[RogerC]

Vector graphics should be relatively straight forward for you.
Printing colour onto fabric is either screen print, sublimation onto polyester fabric or transfers (printed with something like a versacamm onto specialist vinyl) which are then heat pressed onto the material.
The advantages of transfers is you're not restricted to polyester material. You can print full colour. The latest vinyls are 'stretch' so there's no cracking of the image and if stretched it recovers it's shape. The 'disadvantage' is some people don't like the 'feel' of the vinyl transfer although it is much improved in recent years.

[Magic7]

Thanks for the advice Roger. Would I be able to transfer a photograph onto a t-shirt using the vinyl method?
If so, are there any examples that I could take a look at to see what the results look like?

[socialgiraffe]

Hi Magic7

There are several options for full colour photographic images onto garments and it does depend on what colour garment.

If you use a white garment:

Laser transfer using something like The Magic Touch transfer paper.
Pros: Can go on cotton (nicer garments), cheaper garments than sublimation
Cons: can wash out very quickly if people do not follow the washing instructions

Sublimation
Pros: has a superb feel to the print, will last as long as the garment
Cons: you need polyester garments (new one available made by gildan)

Print and Cut transfer vinyl
Pros: superb picture quality
Cons: machine costs £6000 for the cheapest (Roger and I have one each as well as others), cost of transfer is higher

Direct to garment
Pros: best solution for one offs and small run jobs, can use cheaper cotton garments, will last as long as the garment
Cons: machines are expensive as well as the inks

If you are looking at coloured garments then Print and Cut, Direct to garment and the new white laser printers are your only options.

The above is very brief and I am sure there will be others on here who will expand on the different processes. Have a search on this forum and it will throw up a load of info on any of the above

[pisquee]

Full coloured garments are also achievable with sublimation (either transfer of direct) but you need wide format printers and presses big enough to print the whole white shirt to the desired colour (and preferably cut and sew)

[rossdv8]

Hi Magic 7,

Have a look here. http://www.rossdevitt.com/whitsundays/shirts/ This was my first 2 weeks trial and error result. Please bear in mind I do not use Windows or Mac, so I do not have ICC profiles to tune my colours. All colour tweaking was done in a program called GIMP (like photoshop but FREE). Printers are both cheap Brother MFC-J6510DW. Cost about AUD $150.

All are photos straight from my own camera. The nice bright ones are Dye Sub and are printed on 100% polyester shirts from a local store like Tesco's with Dye Sub ink. The less bright ones are 100% cotton using standard Brother ink that came with the printer. They have now been washed about 30 or more times in hot water and tumble dried etc.

Hope this gives you some idea of whether it is possible to do what you want. You will almost certainly use a better setup than I, and have the patience to use ICC colour profiles, so you should get far better results.

[Magic7]

Thanks for your advice guys. Not bad results there Ross, considering the way you have thrown equipment together.

Socialgiraffe - I'm about to start a new thread asking for specific advice on how best to get my business venture up and running. Please check out the examples of my designs and let me know what you would do.

[rossdv8]

Thank you Magic 7. I checked the physical shirts. The first 9 images on that page are dye sub, the last 4 are heat press transfer. I think if I had something other than Linux computers maybe I could do better, but I'm now getting exactly what I need to sell - and I think that is what decorating shirts and mugs etc is about.

Something else that might help you if you do dye sub. Buy some 100% polyester CHEAP bed sheets from somewhere. You can cut a lot of A4 pieces out of a single bed sheet. Press your designs on them.


I had some disasters when I first tried black, blue, green etc. on photos. Font size and style makes a huge difference too. What I like is to print test pics with an ordinary ink jet printer.

When the colour and text combination looks ok, print a sample on your Dye Sub printer. You can easily press 2 images on an A4 paper. Format the page to landscape so you are printing two portrait pics on it side by side.
Sublimate onto an A4 piece of bed sheet.
That will let you choose the pics that actually look best on a shirt, and the colour for the text.

When it looks good, try printing a full size image and sublimating a shirt. I found a local chain store that sells 100% polyester tees at about the same price shirt wholesalers want for bulk quantities. Not as good, but certainly let me test without any great expense.

There will be a difference between poly sheets, shirts, mugs, mouse pads etc. I made a folder for each substrate and saved each project in its own place after I tweaked them. Might be as simple as a few points + or - in something called Gamma. or a hint of change in Red, Green or Blue or Brightness, or Contrast.

You will have Windows or Mac, so will probably have perfect images from the start, but if you don't, that tim might be handy.

Also, I have four heat presses, two flat and two mug. Every one uses a different time, temp and pressure for the same product and ink and paper.
My tee shirts work better with a different paper than my mugs and mouse pads.

I am choosing my favourites, and the favourites of people that have seen and bought my work, and creating a stock range to sell, so it is consistent.

I hope you have as much fun as I have had so far.

[pisquee]

You will have Windows or Mac, so will probably have perfect images from the start, but if you don't, that tip might be handy.

If you have a system with colour management set up properly, and the appropriate ICCs either made for you or from the ink manufacturer/supplier, then you shouldn't need to be doing any/much tweaking at all, and will have to do a load less test/proof prints before going to print properly.

I am not sure that the advice you are offering is sound, and may actually cause a new user more problems. If they are finding that they need to tweak the colour sliders and gamma that much, then it is pointing to them either not having colour management set up correctly in the graphics software, and/or their printer driver, or that the ICC they have isn't correct or good enough. The first two can be corrected by following colour management set up guides on the web, installing the correct ICC for their ink/printer or getting a custom ICC made.

It does seem like you have created a lot more work for your self in terms of the time you've had to spend tweaking everything (time is money remember) for the sake of you not wanting to use windows or osx.
I'm all for people trying to do things differently and experimenting, but would only advise it if it either gives them better results, saves them money, or faster/easier results. If you factor in the value of your time, then I don't see that your route has done any of those things.

Every one uses a different time, temp and pressure for the same product and ink and paper.

I would dispute that statement, or at least want to clarify it.
Most, if not all, blanks come with recommended settings for these parameters, where the product prints well - all things being equal then we would all be using those exact settings.

One of the main things people will end up compensating for is their press - although the temperature guage says one thing, without a suitable (infra-red?) thermometer, it is hard to know what temp your press actually is, and how even that temperature is actually is across the platen So, you may find you need less or more temperature to compensate for the inaccuracies of the press. Also, depending on the temperature of the room you are working in, and the blanks you are using, you may need you find that you need to up the temperature of the press to compensate for its drop in temperature when the blank is put in and the press closed.

As for pressure, most presses do not have a way of judging pressure, so it is hard to compare what pressure people are actually using, but I do agree that for some products there can be quite a range of pressures used which give good results - some products are more tolerable of a range of pressures and give good results.

[rossdv8]

Yes pisquee, I should not post when I'm tired.
The colours I was talking about were not the printed colours and the testing was not to get the colours right. What I meant was about different colours 'going with' pictures. Like printing some red fonts on certain green backgrounds and so on.

Sometimes you might see text printed across a photograph that just can;t really be read. So that was what I was talking about with repeated printing of test images - not about getting colours right. Finding what font colours look good against photographs.

I apologise for not being clearabout that.
I'm certainly not trying to encourage people not to use their drivers or ICC profiles,in fact I said in most posts that I have a different set up. The ONLY print colour suggestions I am trying to help with are the poor devile like me that prefer Linux.

This post is NOT about printer settings. It is about whether Magic 7 should try printing photographs with text on them.

I have four heat presses, two flat and two mug. Every one uses a different time, temp and pressure - I would dispute that statement,

Not trying to argue, all i will say is that every one of my presses is different enough to use slightly different settings in time pressure etc. The big INSTA swing away has a totally different feel and seems to hold heat better than the little chinese one. The old mug press uses a completely different pressure and time than the new one. Don;t know why, but every one is different. If I use the same settings on every press I get wildly varied results. If I use the settings I found by testing each machine I get consistent results.

Sorry it was misunderstood. English is not my first language.,