Help!! faded colors on transfer paper

[Mom2LnE]

Okay, I printed a test copy of the design and it looked fine but when I printed it out on the transfer paper, the colors look faded. Is this normal? I'm using the transfer paper for dark colors and I printed it on the highest resolution (best quality) I could for my printer. I wanted to finish 2 shirts for the kids to wear to a Disney Store grand opening tomorrow.

Thanks.

[Narnian_Princess]

It happens. I tried to make my own custom t-shirt for the Star Wars Weekends and I matched the color perfectly on the test paper. When the transfer itself printed, it was waaaay too light. When you iron the pattern on, it will get a little darker, but not much. I suggest making the design darker than you want; that might help.

[Mom2LnE]

Okay, I figured a few things out why my pictures were printing out so weird.

1.) My black cartridge was almost out. (duh!)

2.) My color cartridge was kind of old so I did a nozzle cleaning a couple of times and that helped.

3.) My cartridge alignment was way off. You know when you change your cartridge and a piece of paper prints out and you change the numbers on the program to match the ones that are even on the paper? Mine were way off.

4.) I set the "paper" setting to "high quality photo paper matte". This helped quite a bit.

5.) I have an hp printer and I'm able to go in and maually manipulate the brightness, saturation and color tone. I adjusted them to more vibrant (saturation) and darker (brightness). this made a HUGE difference.

I'm now happy to say that my tranfers look awesome and I have a bunch of ironing ahead of me. Hope this helps anyone who had the same problems.