How to Prepare Art for an All Over Dye Sublimation

When a solid turns to gas without existence a liquid first information technology'due south called sublimation. This process gave dye sublimation its name, though it's since been discovered that some dye sublimation processes actually have a liquid stage - but the proper noun stuck!

Dye sublimation uses a combination of heat, pressure and time (in varying quantities depending on what's being printed) to shift dye from a transfer to a production.

It'due south a digital print method that results in a near permanent, high resolution full colour print. This makes dye sublimation an amazing tool for product decoration, and since our catalogue of sublimation products just keeps expanding it would be super handy to know some all-time practices for creating your artwork.

The heat, pressure and time required tin can only be applied once the dye is prepare to become. This means all dye sublimation uses transfers.

Beginning we have your artwork and mirror it. Then we print a transfer using special sublimation inks and paper. Finally, we position this as accurately as possible and use the correct amount of rut, force per unit area and time for the production you've ordered.

Using transfers and heat presses makes it extremely difficult to lucifer mockups; nosotros can't guarantee placement since we can't run across exactly where the transfer has been placed! Just that being said, using the templates we've created for each dye sublimation product goes a long way towards correct placement.

Y'all tin can detect these templates beneath each product epitome on its product folio:

These templates are gear up to the recommended specs for your artwork then you don't need to worry about losing quality when using them.

Please annotation: if you're placing your artwork into our templates it'll need to take been created post-obit our design guidelines; placing low quality artwork into a higher quality file will not increase its quality.

Our guidelines for sublimation are near identical to other impress methods considering a high quality print starts with the print file!

For all print files we ask for a 300ppi PNG with RGB color values. This might be counter-intuitive but our software converts RGB to CMYK before information technology prints. The PNG format preserves whatever transparency in your artwork.

Gradients & transparency

Our dye sublimation printing software can't parse colour to transparent gradients.

Creating a color by reducing its opacity to blend it with the empty space beneath it creates a design element that our software simply can't read. Instead, it'll try to compensate for what it doesn't sympathise and the printed upshot won't look like what yous've imagined.

100% transparency is fine, so transparent backgrounds can exist included in your artwork. Other than this, you're free to create artwork as you wish:

• Unlimited colours.

• Gradients (color to colour, non colour to transparency) can be used.

• Complex or simple designs.

Limitations to dye sublimation

There are very few limitations to what y'all can achieve with dye sublimation. On a technical level it has the capability to reproduce high quality, total colour prints on any product capable of receiving the transfer dye.

Merely in that location are some things you should be enlightened of when information technology comes to the printed result of your dye sublimation products:

1. Positioning can't be guaranteed.
This (and the reasons why) was covered above. It's all down to the impress method; covering the product with a transfer and a press makes it near impossible to position your artwork to match the mockup perfectly.

Ways to avoid: Use Inkthreadable's templates to create your artwork to the correct dimensions, create artwork that does not depend on positioning (patterns etc).

2. Creases in the print are expected.
This depends entirely on the product being impress (mugs and phone cases won't always show creases) and the severity volition vary from print to impress. It's down to the products being manufactured before decoration.

Retrieve about an all-over sublimation t-shirt: you can lay a t-shirt as flat as possible only you tin can never guarantee that the fabric along the seams and armpits are crease free. The dye transfers to what information technology'south touching, and if fabric is hidden in a crease it's not going to get printed.

Means to avert: Fabric will always be white before printing so using designs with negative space will make creases less obvious. Artwork that fades to white from the waist up volition get out armpits white by blueprint, for case.

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Source: https://help.inkthreadable.co.uk/en/articles/1981494-designing-for-dye-sublimation

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