Colour Correction

There's no doubt about it, colour correction is an issue in sublimation. The core problem being that what you get out of the machine and onto your printed object is not often going to be what you saw on the screen. The reasons for this are manifold and this is a well-known hitch in the otherwise exemplary sublimation process.

There are two schools of thought on colour-collection. The first is that the use of "third party" software, usually in the form of a specialised printer driver, can be implemented to automatically correct an image for sublimation printing. In practice, this type of software is seldom worth the download. At times, particularly if you are printing a lot of bitmap images and photos, it can be a time-saver, but even with the use of the software results often fall-short of perfect colour-matching, sometimes surprisingly so.

The second school of thought, and in our opinion the superior one in many ways, is the use of colour charts for colour matching. This meaning that having just set up your sublimation system you take the time to print a few "colour variation" charts which you then use for quick colour matching later. This method is better suited to jobs where proper "outline" artwork is available, artwork designed in professional software packages like Coreldraw and Adobe Illustrator.

You will find, as you become more experienced as a sublimation printer, that colour-correction becomes easier with time. As you learn the tricks and shortcuts to perfecting colour matching you will have an easier task in preparing an artwork. Colour correction is also only an issue when exact colour matches are needed. Where a customer wants "dark blue", "red" or "green", there is no problem at all in getting an excellent result in only a few minutes.

Of course, once a job has been prepared and saved, you will be able to duplicate the colours every time without any problem. In most cases, the problem of colour-matching is not a major one and does not trouble experienced sublimation users at all.