Heat transfer printing is a technique where paper is printed, followed by the transfer of the design from the paper onto the textile fabric.  For cotton, the only widely used commercial process involves printing release paper with pigments.  The design on the paper is placed onto the fabric, heated so that the pigment binder softens, releases from the paper, and adheres to the fabric.  This release temperature is usually around 400°F (205°C).  In general, fabrics printed using this technique must be  treated with caution when being  ironed or exposed to excessive heat.  Also, these fabrics will exhibit all the other characteristics of pigment prints both good and bad.  As a point of information, there have been a number of attempts to heat transfer reactive dyes employing a combination of wet/dry processing.  None of these attempts has been a widespread commercial success.

---TIANYU Rotary Screen Printing Solutions