It is known to all that there are some disadvantages with sublimation. You can only work with light colored garments and novelty items. The dye sublimation ink is very transparent and thus will not have the opacity to cover darker items and using fabrics with a 50/50 mix of cotton and polyester, will result in color that looks dull and faded. Sometimes sublimation prints look soft as well. And finally the inks themselves are expensive.
In general case,standard inkjet heat transfers are much different in that the inkjet ink is transferred with a polymer adhesive layer that encapsulates the ink and gives it stability. Inkjet heat transfers are made to work with most any inkjet printer and ink. It is the polymer adhesive layer that does all of the actual transfer work. The ink is printed onto the adhesive layer and it soaks in a bit. After the ink sets into the adhesive layer, the image is ready to be transferred. The heat press causes the adhesive layer with the image to release from the paper and adhere to the shirt.
On the contrary,inkjet heat transfers paper are easy to make and economical for the home hobbyist. The color saturation is greater and it does not require any special inks or dedicated printers. Some consumer grade papers can be purchased at local office supplies while more professional heat transfer papers are sold by commercial wholesalers. Inkjet transfer paper for dark garments is available but the transfer is often a heavy rubber or cloth material onto which the image is printed normally. This is then heat pressed onto the garment face up. It results in a very heavy, patchy image area which can often cause sweating underneath when worn.
