PURPOSE: To shorten the transfer film feed time per heat transfer cycle to make a high speed decoration image transfer possible and avoid the waste of the transfer film in the transfer of decoration image on the surface of work using transfer film.

CONSTITUTION: A heat transfer is carried out with transfer film X held against the surface of work W by a transfer roll 9 and wound on a film winding shaft and the film winding is stopped by detecting a positioning mark M depicted on the transfer film X with a mark detecting sensor 13 during the heat transfer operation.