Dye Sublimation Photo Printers - Types and Use
Dye-Sublimation printers are often called Thermal-Dye transfer printers.
This type of printers are more suitable for professional photographic printing.
Advantages compared with other printers
Coating protection prevents print degradation by, air, UV light and water.
A big advantage compared with inkjet photo printers is the capability to print a superior range of
colors creating a continuous-tone image. They can perfectly reproduce the quality of a print made
in conventional photo labs who use silver-halide paper.
Another advantage over inkjet printers is the instant ready to handle prints because the dry process
takes place inside the printer. There are no liquid-inks used in printing process, this making the
head clogging problem vanished.
Disadvantages
Expensive to purchase.
Support a limited range of print media.
Average performance in black & white prints.
Paper and ribbon very sensitive to impurities and skin oils.
Despite its 'minor' drawbacks, most professionals are using these printers for its capability to
produce lab quality photographic prints.
Dye-Sublimation technology
They use CMY (cyan magneta yellow) and CMYK (CMY+black) colors to produce prints, but many
Dye-Sublimation printers adopted CMYO type, where 'O' is an over-coating thin laminate protection
to avoid the degradation of the print by air, water and UV light.