Sublimation Paper Comparison

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If you want to ensure the brightest, most true-to-life sublimation transfers, your sublimation paper matters! We put three brands of paper to the test, plus tried using regular copy paper and cardstock in this sublimation paper comparison. We figured out which sublimation paper is best&#;and which you should avoid!

Today I wanted to do a quick test of several different brands of sublimation paper. This is a part of my newest series on sublimation printing. You can check out all of the posts in the series here:

So, let&#;s answer the question, &#;what is the best sublimation paper?&#; I ordered three packs of sublimation paper. All three were a medium weight and work with all sublimation printers:

I also had a request to test plain copy paper, so I added that in, along with a smooth white cardstock, because why not?

I tested all five on a piece of polyester fabric (do not use cotton). Remember that sublimation requires polyester or a poly-coating for the sublimation process to work. You&#;ll also need a light-colored material because sublimation ink is transparent.

I&#;ve found having a few yards of polyester fabric is SO helpful when doing sublimation crafting, since what you print is not what you transfer. This gives me the ability to do a test transfer on the fabric before using my more expensive blank/substrate. Highly recommend getting a few yards and using it for practice!

A caveat: I only tested this single color wheel image on a single substrate (polyester fabric) printed with my converted Epson printer. You may have different results with a different image, a different substrate (soft substrates like t-shirts and socks vs. hard substrates like tumblers and cases), or different sublimation printer (I just got a Sawgrass printer so I&#;m interested in seeing if there&#;s a difference!).

Sublimation printing is one of those crafts that can really change depending on these three factors. I suggest you run this same test yourself if you want to figure out which is the best for your particular set-up.

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Sublimation Paper Comparison Set Up

I printed the same exact color wheel image on all five types of paper. I printed them all at the same time. All five were fast-drying and I didn&#;t have to wait long to press.

1. Copy paper
2. Smooth cardstock
3. A-Sub sublimation paper
4. Hiipoo sublimation paper
5. TexPrint sublimation paper

Right away, you can see right away that there&#;s a big variance between the printing on these five images. The smooth cardstock fared the worst&#;it&#;s lightest and the most mottled. The copy paper isn&#;t far behind, though I was kind of surprised it printed a bit better than the cardstock. I think the difference in paper weight between the two might matter here.

Then there are the three high-quality sub papers. I was actually really surprised at the difference between these three. I was honestly expecting them to be the same. But you can definitely see the difference&#;the TexPrint is much more bright and vivid than the other two. You can really see it when you compare the individual colors, particularly in the reds.

The next brightest is the Hiipoo, and then A-Sub was well behind that. I&#;ve had the A-Sub recommended to more than any other paper, so I thought that was a bit interesting. I was definitely interested in seeing how they transferred to the scrap of polyester fabric I had.

Sublimation Paper Comparison Results

Not surprisingly, the transfer of each image mirrored the printed images:

1. Copy paper
2. Smooth cardstock
3. A-Sub sublimation paper
4. Hiipoo sublimation paper
5. TexPrint sublimation paper

You can see here that the TextPrint, followed by the Hiipoo, were significantly better than the A-Sub and then the non-sublimation papers.

Here are detailed shots of each, from my favorite to least favorite.

The first is the TexPrint paper. It&#;s nice and even and the tiny writing is the most clear of all of the versions. The color is the brightest and the most vivid, with almost no mottling. Going forward, this will be my go-to sublimation paper:

Next is the Hiipoo sublimation paper. It&#;s bright and even and vivid like the TexPrint, but not quite as saturated in some of the colors. The text is just ever so slightly less easy to read (compare the words &#;ANALOGOUS&#; on both). This is definitely a solid option.

Next is the A-Sub. I expected this one to be as good (or better, since it&#;s the one that&#;s often recommended) so I was a little disappointed to see that it didn&#;t turn out nearly as vivid as the other two sublimation papers. The color is more mottled and uneven.

Then there&#;s the copy paper. I was a little surprised that this wasn&#;t more terrible. I mean, compared to the others, it&#;s not great, but it&#;s also not as bad as I expected. There&#;s definitely less saturation and less definition between colors. Some of the colors (like in the bottom right) are lighter. Because the paper is thinner, I think it soaked up the sublimation ink a little more so the definition was lost.

You also need to be aware that because copy paper is so thin, it really bled onto the butcher paper I was using to protect my press. On the left is the paper I used for all four of the other transfers, and on the right is the copy paper transfer. This is something to definitely be aware of&#;you don&#;t want that ink getting on your press platen!

Contact us to discuss your requirements of sublimation paper sheets bulk. Our experienced sales team can help you identify the options that best suit your needs.

And finally is the smooth cardstock. This one was not worth it at all&#;the colors are the most faded and mottled and the text is the hardest to read. There is not a lot of color definition and overall you&#;re not going to be happy with your transfer.

Finally, I washed my piece of fabric with all five transfers just to see if there would be any difference. I didn&#;t think there would be and I was right. The washed transfers were pretty much identical to the pre-washed transfers.

So for me and my set up, I thought the best paper was the TexPrint dye-sublimation paper. I&#;ve been using it on many of my projects and it always produces beautiful, vivid results!

Since I originally wrote this post, I have tried two other types of sublimation paper: The Sawgrass TruePix and the PYD Life paper. Both of them did great&#;I will continue to use both of those as well. There are also other brands like Koala sublimation paper and Printers Jack sublimation paper which I haven&#;t tested. I&#;d love to know if you&#;ve used these and what you think!

Still looking for a printer? Check out my Best Sublimation Printers Comparison!

I hope you found this sublimation paper comparison helpful&#;let me know if you have any questions in the comments!

Get Sublimation Blanks

Howdy fellow sublimation peeps! In today&#;s post, we&#;ll be focusing on some that few people understand but it makes a HUGE difference in your print quality: Epson Sublimation Paper Settings.

Most sublimation users just use Premium Presentation Matte for the most ink, but what if you have extra ink causing issues? Going to a lower setting really seems to adversely effect the color. In our test today, we&#;ll waste our time, ink and paper to test so you don&#;t have to!

Here&#;s the full video:

Why do paper setting affect my output?

Paper settings directly change how much ink the printer is putting down based on the amount the printer expects to be absorbed by the print. The best analogy I can think of involves printing on strange objects on different ends of the spectrum. You&#;re were pouring black ink onto a porous, absorbent object, such as a sponge. How much ink do you think it would take to make the sponge has a nice, crisp black color? Probably quite a bit. Now, let&#;s contrast that with something non-porous, such as glass. How much ink do you think it would take for the ink to show up on glass? Not much at all, as the glass isn&#;t absorbing the ink. Make sense?

While this seems irrelevant to the matter of sublimation, quite the opposite is true. By manipulating the epson sublimation paper settings, we can &#;trick&#; the printer into putting more ink down on the paper. More ink in the sublimation paper allows for more ink to be released into the substrate, allowing for much more vivid colors.

What are the different Epson sublimation paper settings?

In this &#;experiment&#;, we&#;re going to print one 8.5&#; x 11&#; of each design. As a control, we will use all of the same settings (High Quality, High Speed Printing Off,

The design will feature a color chart and solid black text. This will be a test of how good the colors are and we will see how prone the setting is to streaks/wheel marks/etc. We will grade each one by comparing how vivid the colors are and how much ink is left in the paper.

If you notice, there&#;s a marker to avoid confusion later on. I have a feeling this will be important. These will be printed with my Epson WF- printer. Once printed, we will be pressing on 100% polyester fabric, the smoothest I could find. This should be an adequate test for the Epson sublimation paper settings!

Results!

The results were quite shocking. Despite having 13 different print setting, there were only 4 different &#;groups&#;

Heavy Ink

• Ultra Premium Photo Paper Glossy
• Premium Photo Paper Glossy
• Photo Paper Glossy
• Premium Photo Paper Semi-Gloss

I feel like the Heavy Ink is just asking from problems with any type of saturated image, particularly black. This setting results in wheel marks in EVERY test print. I wouldn&#;t recommend using it. In addition, the blacks have a noticeable red tint when using any of these paper settings.

Heavy Ink with Reduced Red in Black

• Premium Presentation Paper Matte

This was similar to &#;Heavy Ink&#; but without the red in the black. The black had a more pure color and looked fantastic.

Light Ink

• Plain Paper / Bright White
• Letterhead
• Recycled
• Color
• Preprinted
• High Quality Plain Paper
• Envelope

The light settings, including one of my favorites: High Quality Plain Paper looked pretty good, but the dark color were noticeably more muted vs the &#;Heavy Ink&#; settings

Medium Ink with Reduced Red in Black

• Premium Presentation Paper Matte &#; With Standard Instead of High Quality

This may be my Goldilocks setting on hard substrates going forward. I feel like this will reduce a lot of shadowing while maintaining a good black color on most substrates. If you are running into wheel marks when printing, clean your rollers and switch the Premium Presentation Paper Matte with Standard instead of High Quality.

I did this one as a personal test, because I feel like it will be in-between High Quality Plain Paper and Premium Presentation Matte.

After pressing and testing for hours, here&#;s the data I came up with:

What should I use?

Based on those results, you can always get the most vivid colors while maintaining the best black from the Premium Presentation Paper Matte. If that&#;s the case, why not just use it all the time? Well, with sublimation, there&#;s a point where the substrate was absorbed the maximum amount of ink that it possibly can. Anything after this point adds addition ink, that has to go somewhere. Extra ink can often lead to blurry or streaky images, particularly on simple prints.

Here&#;s my general rule of thumb: I use Premium Presentation Paper Matte UNLESS the design is simple (text only) AND heavy on black saturation. If that the case, you can greatly reduce the chances of streaks, wheel marks, and other print issues by switching to Premium Presentation Paper Matte, but with High Quality turned to standard quality. If you&#;re still running into issues, you can use any of the following paper settings: Plain Paper / Bright White, Letterhead, Recycled, Color, Preprinted, High Quality Plain Paper, or Envelope. I hope this guide on Epson Sublimation Paper settings has been helpful!

Are you interested in learning more about sublimation paper sheets services? Contact us today to secure an expert consultation!