Photos on mugs

[Joohlyauk]

This is the image that I meant to put up earlier. I think it's pretty damn good, but not perfect. I'll be giving this away as a freebie to the customer as the face has kind of pinky bits on. I guess using someone else's photo isn't ideal and I have no idea how to photoshop/paintshop it yet. Here it is.. my photo of it doesn't do it justice but take a peek.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]1949[/ATTACH]
Think I'll avoid photos for a while haha

[purpledragon]

This is the image that I meant to put up earlier. I think it's pretty damn good, but not perfect. I'll be giving this away as a freebie to the customer as the face has kind of pinky bits on. I guess using someone else's photo isn't ideal and I have no idea how to photoshop/paintshop it yet. Here it is.. my photo of it doesn't do it justice but take a peek.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]1949[/ATTACH]
Think I'll avoid photos for a while haha

Is This a hobby or a business , if its a hobby great exclude any photos except your own and practise at your own pace . If you intend to make money from this then im afraid you had better learn your chosen editing program pretty darn quick. You will find most of your customers will invariably give you photos to print and will be expecting the colours to be right.
You describe the abouve picture as pretty dam good but then go on to point out all the flaws so not really pretty dam good sorry to sound so harsh its a tough enough business so i find honesty is the best policy or you will learn nothing.
the mug shown is printed top to bottom and seems like there's none of the usual signs of cheap equiptment ie full print no wavey lines so thats a big plus and half your battle won nowe you just need to sort the colours out.
having not seen the original picture its difficult to say what is colour problem and what is just a bad picture but from what i can see is the face is too red and there seems to be some dark areas on the face also this tells me that either you dont have the correct profile installed or you have a setting wrong somewhere.
what printer are you using
have you installed a profile
what inks are you using (are they really sawgrass or have you obtained some of the cheaper wide format inks)
what paper are you using
what times and temps are you using on your machine

you could consider this a check list to get your prints right if any obne of the above isnt correct then it would cause you problems .
Paul on here has a thread some where with a test print which i find is excellent it has a wide range of colour gradients , faces etc and is brilliant for making sure your set up is right . i suggest you seek this out print a load of copies out read lots of valuble advice on this forum and tweak your set up until the test print on the mug is bang on to what you see on the screen , you may lose a few mugs doing this but better to use one test print than a constant supply of photos which vary from picture to picture.
good luck !

[rossdv8]

Hi Joohlyauk,
I work exclusively with photos. Prior to beginning with sublimation I messed with heat transfer and before any of that I was printing photos onto canvas.
If you have Photoshop, learn a few small things about it. If you don;t have Photoshop yet you can download a program that does a lot of the same stuff and it is free. It is called GIMP and is available for Windows.Mac and Linux.
Look up GIMP and "Levels" or Photoshop and "Levels". Levels is usually found in the colour menu. It is like a graph and will make a huge difference to how your picture looks.
The other main thing to look at is "Curves", but learn about levels first.
Once you have that sorted, learn a little about "Saturation" and "Gamma". There's heaps of stuff on YouTube and in blogs and things.
If it works, here's a quick example of a pic taken from direct from the camera and the same pic with levels adjusted in to get rid of the dark haze, then a little saturation of colours to give the picture a more touristy look, but without going artificial.


[ATTACH=CONFIG]1952[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]1955[/ATTACH]

[Joohlyauk]

Thank you Purpledragon for your input, totally agree I need to learn more.
Excellent advice from Ross, thank you very much. Deffo makes a lot of difference! I need to learn how to put pictures into the templates I have too, eg.. template with a window blank for a pic. I've got so much to learn. One step at a time.

Thank you,

Ju

[Joohlyauk]

I thought it was pretty damn good to start with as it was my first attempt of sublimating a photo and yes after I'd got over my excitement I did start to see the flaws. Onwards and upwards! Thanks, Ju

[cornwall0410]

Hi Joohlyauk, Im also just starting out and was impressed with the coverage but Im a real novice at the momenet. If you dont mind me asking what mug press are you using? many thanks Andy

[socialgiraffe]

I thought it was pretty damn good to start with as it was my first attempt of sublimating a photo and yes after I'd got over my excitement I did start to see the flaws.

I would show your mug to a few non industry related people. We are very critical on here because we all have exceptionally high standards which is a good thing, but showing someone who does not understand all the minute flaws will show you what you can get away with and what is not acceptable.

I am not condoning sending out mugs with flaws, just saying that it is worth finding out what joe public thinks. I see loads of mugs on the high street that I personally think are woeful but they are still sold.

[purpledragon]

I would show your mug to a few non industry related people. We are very critical on here because we all have exceptionally high standards which is a good thing, but showing someone who does not understand all the minute flaws will show you what you can get away with and what is not acceptable.

I am not condoning sending out mugs with flaws, just saying that it is worth finding out what joe public thinks. I see loads of mugs on the high street that I personally think are woeful but they are still sold.

fair comment

[Joohlyauk]

I've had really good feedback so far with my mugs having just a design on (not photo). I'm going to a crafts fayre soon so will keep you posted. Onwards and upwards!

[Joohlyauk]

Hi Andy, I'm not really the best to ask about mug presses on here as I'm new myself. I bought mine from Ebay £79.99 I've checked the supplier but they haven't got any more for sale. Plotandpress4you It works great, but like I said I'm new so I wouldn't know otherwize haha.. It hasn't got a manufacturers name on it. Best to ask senior members on here what the best one to buy is and tell them your price range. Sorry I'm not much help, Ju