Patent ID: 8643687

Claim:
A printing surface processing method comprising: forming a substantially flat first printing image expressed with unevenness sense based on a touch and/or a stroke of a brush on a first face of a thermal expansion sheet in which a thermal expansion layer is formed on a first face of a base material sheet; forming a second printing image constituted of a grayscale image made of a photothermal conversion material on a second face of the thermal expansion sheet, the grayscale image including a dark portion and a light portion with densities being set to form a substantially uneven shape on the first face of the thermal expansion sheet, the substantially uneven shape corresponding to unevenness image data, in which first unevenness image data to realize the unevenness sense of the first printing image and second unevenness image data to realize unevenness sense of fabric on which the first printing image is supposed to be formed are superposed; and applying thermal energy to the second printing image to expand the thermal expansion layer to form the substantially uneven shape in accordance with the second printing image on the first face of the thermal expansion sheet.