# format or program for printing sublimation transfers



## plainwhiteshirt (Jun 4, 2007)

Hello friends, 

Very amateur question as I break into sublimation printing. If my transfer paper was 8.5 x 11 Could I simply go to microsoft word and create slogan's or names for t-shirts OR do I always need to be printing via a corel or adobe program. 

similarly if I had a high DPI pic could I simply paste it onto a word doc and print that on sub transfer paper? 

THANK YOU!!!


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## calhtech (Feb 4, 2012)

plainwhiteshirt said:


> Hello friends,
> 
> Very amateur question as I break into sublimation printing. If my transfer paper was 8.5 x 11 Could I simply go to microsoft word and create slogan's or names for t-shirts OR do I always need to be printing via a corel or adobe program.
> 
> ...


Long as you have Sub ink, your printer doesn't care what program you use. Though typically you need to be able to select an ICC profile when printing. This usually is provided by your ink supplier. Otherwise you are good to go using most any application. You will find, as you get going good, the limitations WORD and other apps of that type will have. You should consider GIMP and Inkscape that are FREE, or Photoshop, Coreldraw, etc for more advanced image editing and composing. Good luck.
Calhtech>


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## plainwhiteshirt (Jun 4, 2007)

awesome! thank you! Yes, I am slowly learning the in's and out's of GIMP. I also need a high DPI. Is a high DPI photo from GIMP simply a matter of starting with a high quality photo, modifying it and saving it with highest quality setting? Thanks so much


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## Dekzion (May 18, 2015)

Absolutely correct Daniel, It matters not what you create the image with, as long as you can save or export it at around 300dpi and you are using the correct profiles for your ink, you've cracked it.
if you want that old school look then you can even use Publisher! I use Serif PagePlus coupled with PhotoPlus to adjust the images then just export as Jpg and print.


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## plainwhiteshirt (Jun 4, 2007)

wow - thanks for your time! I never consider publisher or knew about the other. Is there advantages in Publisher / phot plus over GIMP or is that GIMP simply takes longer to master and is less user friendly than publisher and photo plus? thank you


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## Dekzion (May 18, 2015)

Daniel, There's no advantage of anything over anything. The bottom line is it is all down to the creativity of the person wielding the mouse or graphics pen. For example, just say you use a nice script to write a poem in Word, printed it using your sub ink and pressed it on a pillow case, tadah! you have a very saleable item, But You Only Used Word! Likewise, we have a scribbling table in our shop where children design a picture for their shirts etc using the available water paint, crayons and felt tips etc. I scan and print it then press it on their item. They always look great, but yet again there was no fancy program involved.
I thoroughly recommend you persist and learn to use Gimp. It is open source and does everything that any other programs can do combined! due to the fact it is open source and is constantly being improved with additions and ideas found by the developers in other graphics programs. There are zillions of lessons on the web for Gimp. just start small and learn slowly, but persist.


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## john221us (Nov 29, 2015)

There is a very nice application called Qimage which is for batch printing. It lets you do minor filters such as cropping and mirroring, but is really meant to help you print and organize multiple images on a page. It also supports ICC profiles. The author has posted a bunch of videos on how to use it too. I highly recommend it. Qimage Ultimate - Features


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## plainwhiteshirt (Jun 4, 2007)

thank you both for the info - awesome about Qimage John


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