This link will take you to a page describing the different ways

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Just my two cents, as a former screen printer the shirts that are screen-printed comes out far much nicer and last longer than the heat pressed ones.

this is a sorta quick description of a few [URL removed]
For T-shirts, there are more than 1 way to go, and they vary GREATLY in price, feel, and durability. To give you advice on this, there are a few questions, first, is how many you need, and how many colors involved, (screen printing is incredibly durable, but the drawbacks are setup fees, and the more colors, the more expensive, this is the way to go for few colors, and more shirts, however as you noted, they do have a heavy “feel”). There is also archival inks, and this is a middle of the road, decent “feel”, decent durability, decent cost. the low end would be closer to the “iron-on”, and this is the cheapest way to go, but the quality is at the bottom, there is also a hard feel, (which means you feel the hard image on the shirt), and durability is also the lowest, (it will start fading after a single wash), there is also dye-sublimation, (a more expensive, but for small numbers is cheaper than silk screening, because there is no setup needed, (if someone charges you one, they are taking advantage of you), and you can actually reproduce with photo-quality, as far as durability, its second to none, the image simply wont fade, (if done correctly, you can even use bleach on the images without worry), also there is basically no feel, (you are actually dying the material, there is no residue to feel at all), the downside of this procedure however, is you cannot use it on cotton, it has to be used on polyester shirts, (or other man-made material), for the bonding to take place, if you do it on cotton, it will pretty much wash right out. (There are options where a “polyester” spray, or polyester “iron-on” or special “sheets” that are placed onto a cotton shirt and then the image is “sublimated” onto the treated fabric, but this is generally a NOT widely accepted procedure except to the people selling the polyester sprays, and “iron-ons”, as both the quality, feel, and durability suffers greatly. WHEW, i guess i rambled on more than i intended, but those are the pluses, and minuses of the most common methods of imprinting, (I wont discuss direct to garment, since the costs of the machines prohibit most small shops from even owning them). Best of luck!

@canacreations, not sure what you mean by a few things in your post, if by if by Eco silk transfer, you are referring to a product like Lazertran, or Jacquard, thats not dye-sublimation, those are products designed to use inkjet ink, you certainly would never want to print dye-sub inks onto silk transfer, as the substrate simply wouldnt be able to pull the dye once heat was applied. The ink is what makes dye-sublimation possible, (ok, you can also use ribbon type printers as well, but that’s pretty much only used for small hard items, like ceramics), the process of sublimation is that the “ink”, (and its not technically ink), is never a liquid, its a solid, when heated, goes straight to a gas. And i agree that using a few colors, screen printing is probably the way to go, however with anything requiring photo quality, screen printing simply is never the answer, (so it depends on what shes looking for, which is why i tried to list quite a few, there is NO perfect transfer solution, they ALL have their benefits, and drawbacks, and ive used just about every one of them). Im also a little confused by the “for durability, and quality let the artists do the work”. I work with many artists, and although most insist on proofing everything, countless times, they are usually the first to admit there is very little correlation between the 2, they have no time, or desire to learn color matching, pantone grids, ICC profiles, editing software, and substrate technical specs, etc…

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Horsenut, Thank You!!! That was painless with your help. :)

Go to Youtube.com and search t shirt making. Theres alotta ways you can do it w/o expensive machines.

The best result I got so far are the NEENAH ImageClip laser transfert paper.
It’s a Trim-free paper. Have a look on youtube and you’ll see what are the possibilities of this type of paper.

This forum is also awesome for asking precise questions about anything related to printing shirt ( mostly heat transfert )
Just browsing trought this forum and I learn tons of usefull tips and tricks.

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Well for obvious reasons there is nothing like a real screen print. Printed by hand by an artist. That would be someone like me.

Although we do from time to time offer unique Di-sublimation transfers we use a special Eco silk transfer rather then the other methods.

But for durability and quality let the artists do the work.

I do screen printing.. and have found I like how they turn out much better than heat pressed… If you want to so some of my work you can go to my booth.. I just listed some new shirts last night that I screen printed..

my friend Breezers does custom printing you should ask her she could tell you what you need to know [URL removed]

For me, the best approach is to go the mall and pay someone to do it. No fuss no Muss, lol.