mugs are sublimating darker than the picture

[lollyb85]

Hello, I've been having some colour issues with my mugs. Im using photoshop elements 14, a ricoh sg3110dn printer, a blue wave, mp160 heat press ( which doesn't have an idling temperature) city ink express sublimation inks and papers ,I've triple checked that all my printer prefernence are where they should be and im just at a loss. Photographs are just too dark when I'm pressing, they are light as they should be when printed but really dark after sublimating.
Basic colours work spot on such as text or drawings that have been scanned and sublimated.
my inks are fresh, the printer is used daily ,the mugs are good, I've had success with them with anything other than photos.
at the moment I am pressing them at 180 degrees for 180 seconds. before that it was 170 degrees for 200 seconds, both give the same results.
Any help or suggestions greatly received thanks!

[webtrekker]

Hi. Great first post, you've evidently tried every avenue yourself before posting.

I have much the same setup as you (just different presses) and experience the same problem with some images. I put this down to my monitors not being profiled so that what I see on screen isn't exactly what's printed. I get around this by adding a Brightness adjustment layer in PS to compensate. I then bump the brightness up by 25 to 30 and that seems to do the trick.

[lollyb85]

Hi thanks for the reply, I shall give that a try, such a frustrating business sometimes, I've googled everything so much and this forum always comes up so took the plunge and asked my question! do you mind me asking if you know how to test that the mug press is actually working properly? i.e heating evenly?
thanks in advance

[lollyb85]

Oh my god, I did what you said with the lightening of the images and it worked!! Pictures are perfect!! Thank you again for your advice .