# quick question about Tie dye, heat press and transfer paper



## sianjarvis1 (Feb 27, 2014)

Hey,
Im planning on tie dyeing white t shirts, using pale blues, purples
and pinks and then heat pressing them, Jet pro paper,
My question is, will i need to buy opaque ones for dark or
bright shirts, or can i use soft stretch for white/ light fabric?

I'm thinking the dye will come out quite light, and have heard
the soft stretch papers are better in quality.


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## joeshaul (Mar 1, 2008)

Anything that is for white/light does not have an opacity to it and therefore will be transparent on what you apply it to. 

Your colors will shift and take on that of the merger between what is your background and your current color. The best example to probably give would be to use the multiply blend setting in Photoshop. The image on the left is what you would expect, the image on the right (with the text using the multiply blend) is more similar to what you'd actually get. 

Another example would be to take some colored sharpies and colored pieces of construction paper, just because your sharpie is green, doesn't mean it's going to show up green on black construction paper. 

The problem you will run into with opaques is they will have a heavier hand (aka feel to them), and they will also require more precise trimming, as it is providing the white surface to give you all the colors you can print, if you don't trim off the white, you're going to end up with white on your shirt. This does not happen with the light/whites, because it is using transparency for lack of ink, although there is sometimes a small window that can be felt depending on your transfer paper/method.

Edit: A good example of not trimming an opaque image would be my shirt icon, I haven't bothered to update it since I got my black shirt awhile back, that would be what would happen if you didn't trim out the "JS"


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## sianjarvis1 (Feb 27, 2014)

ok thank you so much for your help


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## Lnfortun (Feb 18, 2006)

sianjarvis1 said:


> ok thank you so much for your help


If the image color is spot solid color use Thermoflex Plus. It is very thin. It feels and looks like screen print. You need vinyl cutter and it is not printable though. You can get small footprint with registration mark sensor for less than $300.00.


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## sianjarvis1 (Feb 27, 2014)

joeshaul said:


> Anything that is for white/light does not have an opacity to it and therefore will be transparent on what you apply it to.
> 
> Your colors will shift and take on that of the merger between what is your background and your current color. The best example to probably give would be to use the multiply blend setting in Photoshop. The image on the left is what you would expect, the image on the right (with the text using the multiply blend) is more similar to what you'd actually get.
> 
> ...



if the design im printing onto the t shirt has no white in it, does that mean i can use the soft stretch paper for light tshirts? also, what if i changed any white to a light grey?


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## joeshaul (Mar 1, 2008)

Sorry, thought I responded to this already, but apparently didn't. With JetPro SoftStretch, you'll run into that same transparency issue on any non white shirt. A bright red will shift more to a darker red/burgundy if it's on grey. If you're talking about changing your design so that the paper prints out with a grey, that grey is still bound by the transparency, IE: if you print a medium grey on a navy blue shirt, it'll essentially turn up black. It's not to say that the design will look bad or anything, just that color shifting will occur. JPSS you don't need to trim as precisely, but I think there's still a slight polymer window/feel where it's not trimmed that pretty much goes away after a wash.

I used a GT541 for printing for the first few years of t-shirt printing, and we ended up printing on some lighter grays (ash/ice grey/etc), light blues, light pinks, and so on without any complaints. Sports Greys sometimes would cause an issue with people saying it got too dark. I had about 4 brother color charts printed on a variety of colors to kind of demonstrate to people what happens with the colors (a red shirt, a blue shirt, a forest green shirt, and a white shirt). I'd usually use those to show people what to expect as colors went darker, the red didn't have much color options available, the forest green only black looked good (but a lot of people thought black on it wouldn't be noticeable which is also true), light blue looked really good for most colors, and white of course was the control to show "these colors become this when the shirt color's changed".


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