Feature: Dye Sublimation Printing All you need to know about Dye Sublimation Printing

What is Dye Sublimation Printing?
This article explains Dye Sublimation Printing and the difference between Inkjet & Dye Sublimation Printing.

How does it work?
Dye-sublimation is a process of creating photographs by a printing technique that diffuses dye onto paper. This dye comes in the form of a ribbon and is converted into a diffused gas when heat is applied. The dye is then absorbed by a special receiving layer on the paper. A special print head warms to various precise temperatures and creates different levels of colour depending on the amount of heat produced. The print head in the Hi-Touch consumer printers is capable of producing 256 levels of each colour (cyan, magenta, yellow) and thus able to create a total of 16.77 million true colours by combining these three primary colours. With a special over-coating layer, the dye layers are sealed into the paper and the image is protected against UV light, fingerprints, and even water! There is no smudging, running, or blotching; prints are dry and ready to touch the instant they come out of the printer!

What are the Technical Differences?
Dye-sublimation differs greatly from inkjet in many ways, most significantly in quality. Dye-sub is known for its high quality and continuous tone output. Continuous tone means that all gradations of colour are used when creating an image. For example, when creating a grey scale, from black to white, a continuous tone printer will show all shades of grey in between the black and the white by actually printing them. A half-toning device such as an ink-jet printer will use a dithering technique of placing dots close together in order to trick the eye. In other words, ink jet printers use a series of black dots placed close to white dots in order to trick the eye into blending the pixels when viewed. With magnification the difference can be seen where the dye-sub output is clear and sharp but dots can be seen on ink-jet prints.

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