Sublimation printer printing wrong colours

[Matt Quinn]

I don't doubt it for a second Paul... But that's the value of having the correct profile.

In fact you'll probably find that most domestic printers with OEM inks do a pretty acceptable job of printing greys on paper and most other common media. And many of the after-market inks aren't a million miles off either. - But if you rolled the clock back nearly a decade when people were experimenting with what we'd now call gicleé printing and more serious photo printing this sort of conversation would have been pretty common...

If you scratch around the more serious photography forums though you'll still find folk agonising over much the same things... And ultimately the 'answer' for exhibition standard work is generally a monochrome inkset.

However... all that is academic; and I see little reason why, with the correct profile, perfectly acceptable greys wouldn't be possible - The profile is the key IMHO.

[Paul]

all great. i agree 100% with you. profile is a must! but in sublimation world is not that easy. even with correct profile you can only go so close. sublimation color gamout is so small...

If you scratch around the more serious photography forums though

I flicked few in the past

[Matt Quinn]

I'm yet to do a sublimation run... But we do have some inks here, and even by eye they seem quite a way from the process colours I'm used to seeing. - Certainly a very small gamut is to be expected... Which makes accuracy all the more important. In another thread the matter of Dye Sub inks not advancing much over the years was raised; and I'm very much reminded of experiments many years ago with inks sourced from friends in the mainstream print industry...

So I expect this to be a bit of a step back to older techniques; and fully expect to be paying to have a profile done for my own set up very soon. Personally I wouldn't expect to be able to produce anything more than 'ballpark' results by eye... And that's with good colour accuity developed over 30 years dealing with colour images; albeit in a different context.

- Personally I suspect Dye-Sub is something properly do-able only with either well tried-and-tested, properly developed 'turnkey' systems... Or, if you're tempted along the path I have; where equipment is being sourced through various avenues, you need to be doing that with a lot of background technical knowledge... Enough at least to know what you're buying and working with. - Or at the very least you need to be prepared to invest the time and money on climbing the learning curve.

...You do seem to see some VERY variable results on the market!

[Photo-Lite]

just a quick update.
we have managed to print the image off with grey in it.
dont know if it is a cure or just a bodge job. soon find out when he prints off a full colour image.
we ended up using the ArTainium profile and tweeking the colours in the printer properties untill we saw grey and yes we did save the settings just incase.

thanks again for all your feedback and like i say im not sure if it is a fix or just a cure for now so i think he will be still looking for a proper ICC profile

cheers everyone

[Paul]

what do you mean by "weeking the colours in the printer properties"??
by doing this you dont actualy use profile any more.

[Photo-Lite]

we turned the colour managment on set at ArTainium in corel draw and when we printed the image off we adjusted the ink in the properties in the printer and the image came out correct.
we also tried turning the colour managment off in coreldraw and printing with profile but the image came out green where it should of been grey.
we know it is not a fix but it gives him a bit more time to get a correct profile.

[Paul]

so i think you doing all wrong then... your profile send diferent info to the printer and you telling you printer diferent info lol

set your corel like in this pdf file.
linky linky

[Photo-Lite]

Thanks for the link Paul.
this is the way we set as PDF but as we do not know what make of ink it is we tried various profiles and the best result we got was with ArTainium (but turned everything green) then adjusting printer.
when we use any of the profiles we managed to get hold of, the image is either brown or green where it should be grey.
he has managed to get hold of some ink from a china company (best sublimation) but they do not provide an ICC profile, so changing the ink to that is no better.
i think he will have to either bodge it untill ink runs out or replace all of his ink with a recognisable brand

[Paul]

lets dont talk about ink on this moment. set it all asper your printer. most icc will work with any ink if profile is chosen for correct printer. so if you got 1400 dont chose icc for r285

just chose your printer and artanium icc. colors should be ok. bit off but still not bad. and then start tweaking from there. otherwise you will loose this battle.

[Photo-Lite]

he has just phoned me back and his printer is epson D120 which is not listed in that link.
will the epson C88 and C120 work?