Mirror image printing

[Steve Rindsberg]

I decided to try printing some t-shirt transfers.

Interesting times ensued. In case this helps save somebody else a bit of frustration, here's the executive summary:

I have a Canon Pixma ip4200, nice little inexpensive printer. The driver includes a paper setting for transfer material, so I figured it'd also have a "Mirror Image" setting.

The online help didn't mention it, not where I could locate it, and I couldn't find any similar setting in the driver. No matter, I'm using a drawing app that can flip things, so forge on. Ah. But first choose transfer paper in the printer driver on the assumption that it'll auto-set the most appropriate ink/color settings. Fine.

Fire up the drawing app, go to some lengths to flop everything as needed, preview using the drawing app's preview. Good. Print and let the printer driver show a preview too. Good again. Hit the print button.

Out comes the original unreversed art. Or rather the reversed art RE-reversed back to its original state.

Sheesh.

Seems that the driver's preview doesn't reflect it, but choosing transfer material causes it to autoflop the image. If they hadn't made it so damn difficult, it couldn't have been simpler. ;-)