Dye sublimation printing, also known as “dye sub” or simply “sublimation printing”, is an almost magical process to watch in action. It’s not magic though, it’s science.
The process of sublimation is to go from a solid state, to a gaseous state without going through the liquid stage, with the help of heat and pressure.
It’s the same process that is used to freeze dry instant, soluble coffee, and to make the fake theatrical smoke from dry ice.
With dye sublimation printing, you print using an inkjet printer running dye sublimation ink, which is made up of special water based dyes.
You then print onto “sublimation paper” which is purely a holding paper, meant to hold the dye in the form of the digital image.
Then, you put this printed paper, printed side down, onto the garment, or gift item or substrate, and heat press it.
While being pressed, the dye molecules that were held in the paper, turn into a gas, and then turn back into a solid, but in doing so, they bond with the long chain polymer molecules present in the substrate, meaning that the digital image leaves the paper and dyes into the fibres of the garment.
Dyed into – not printed onto.
It’s important to note that dye sublimation isn’t a surface print process, like pigment printing. Nor is it actually a transfer process like laser or inkjet transfer.
Yes, there’s paper involved, but it’s just a holding paper.
This is a dying process, you’re dying the image into the fibres of the garment, or into the polymer surface of the gift item when it comes to items such as mugs, plates, wooden items, metal items, glass products and so on.
The reason it’s important to realise this, is that this fact is responsible for both the biggest pros and the biggest cons of sublimation printing.
Pros of sublimation printing:
- You can achieve incredible vibrancy, deep vivid colors, for graphics and photographic images.
- There is no difference in feel or handle, between the printed area, and the non-printed area of the garment.
- Fantastic colour fastness.
- Huge range of blank giftware items
Vibrancy of image.
Dye sublimation can produce some stunning, vibrant colors. This is especially the case if you’re using a Sawgrass Virtuoso sublimation printer using the brilliant VPM (Virtuoso Print Manager) print rip, which comes free with the Virtuoso printers.
Using good print management software like this, and with a great, professionally produced color profile (which also comes free with the virtuoso setups) allows for stunning prints, but also very realistic prints.
Feel, Handle or Hand.
Usually when a Tshirt is printed, the feel or handle of the printed area is stiffer than the rest of the garment. With dye sublimation, though, the printed are feels exactly the same to the touch as it did prior to printing, so the printing doesn’t affect the feel or handle of the garment at all.
Color Fastness
Tshirts that have been printed via dye sublimation perform incredibly well when it comes to color fastness, in fact, it’s arguably the best garment decoration process for color fastness.
There is virtually no fading over time regardless of the number of washing cycles (wash fastness). Very little fading from contact abrasion (rub fastness) and very good performance in terms of not fading in natural light (light fastness).
You’ll certainly never get peeling or cracking – the image will last the lifetime of the garment!
Huge range of giftware products
With dye sublimation, you can print onto a really wide range of gift items, including wood, glass, metal, ceramics and more. With a standard flat heat press, all you need is to buy in specially prepared sublimation blanks. These blanks are either made from polyester/polymer material, or they have a special polymer coating.
We’re talking a LOT of potential products, including Aluminium photo panels, glass photo frames, wooden plaques and signs, mousemats, placemats/table mats, wooden drinks coasters, ceramic drinks coasters, glass drinks coasters, metal keyrings, metal bottle openers, ceramic mugs, china mugs, travel mugs, tea towels, bath towels, napkins, cushions, pillow cases, jigsaw puzzles, tins, keepsake boxes… and on, and on, and on.
Cons of Dye Sublimation Printing
- For polyester only, or poly cotton heavy in polyester (65% or higher in polyester).
- For white or light garments only.
These cons mainly relate to Tshirt printing.
Dye sublimation printing is very well suited to giftware printing, and the only con as far as this is concerned is that you need specially treated sublimation blanks as opposed to being able to print onto standard items as you would be able to with laser transfer paper for hard substrates.
But there are a huge amount of blank products made for dye sublimation, so this isn’t a particular issue unless there’s a very specific product you wanted to print, which you can’t find available with the dye sub coating.
Polyester only?
Remember I said the dye particles bond with the long chain polymers present? This means that when it comes to garments, you need polyester. You can’t print onto 100% cotton, with dye sublimation printing.
There are solutions, such as powders and sprays, but honestly, if you need to print onto cotton garments, just stick to one of the other methods, there’s really no alternative to polyester garments when it comes to dye sublimation printing.
There is a great fabric available if you can find it, which is a cotton which is treated at the stage that the fabric is being taken from loom state to being print-ready, with some form of a special patented treatment (so special, that while I’ve been able to get small samples of this fabric, it’s almost impossible to find out where it is produced and how to buy it, so good luck with that one… although I do suspect that it will become more readily available in the not too distant future.
But this fabric is mainly for home furnishings, I’ve not seen anyone producing this kind of fabric yet for jersey cottons, which is what is used for Tshirts.
There are plenty of good Tshirts available these days that are made from 100% polyester, thanks to the popularity of sublimation printing, so it’s not a huge problem. But, it’s a huge problem for some, when combined with the next major con of dye sublimation printing.
Only for whites and light colored Tshirts?
Remember, dye sublimation is a dying process, you can’t dye something lighter than it is, that would be bleaching. So in order to put a print onto a garment, the base colour of the garment needs to be lighter in colour than the print.
For most images, this would require a white Tshirt or sweatshirt, hoody, or whatever garment you’re printing.
Depending on the colors in the design, you may be able to get away with a light pastel colour such as light yellow, light Khaki