Sublimation printing without color profile
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Have her sublimate this test photo and see if the colors are still perfect.
http://www.gballard.net/dl/PDI_TargetFolderONLY.zip
You can hit some colors without a profile but if you want the best color possible you need an ICC profile.
EDIT: I added the full image since it was cropped by using the direct link to the photo
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One thing to keep in mind is what is great colors to one person may be very different to another. Example - When we started long ago I was just amazed at the colors we got from Artainium ink . When we moved to wide format and started to use Subli I was surprised at how much better the colors were. Later switching to J-tek we were again amazed at the color improvement.
MGParrish's test will trulu show if you have great colors or could be be improved with a profile. Consider it a blessing if the colors are really close to the sample.
Realizing there is a quote above "red is red" I would suggest the first time a customer says we just want "red" be very careful. Red is by far the most challenged color for dye sub. Not only by the wide range people consider to be "red" but historically it has been one of the colors that is hardest to hit spot on. Typically if you can get a great black and a great red everything else falls into place.
MGParrish's test will trulu show if you have great colors or could be be improved with a profile. Consider it a blessing if the colors are really close to the sample.
Realizing there is a quote above "red is red" I would suggest the first time a customer says we just want "red" be very careful. Red is by far the most challenged color for dye sub. Not only by the wide range people consider to be "red" but historically it has been one of the colors that is hardest to hit spot on. Typically if you can get a great black and a great red everything else falls into place.
Agreed but there is no reason to chase nirvana, it doesn't exist. if the process you are using is turning out a very acceptable image, your clients love your work and you can sleep without stressing over should you really try and change all your settings because someone a world away knows better than you do, but is not your customer, or some overseer of the printing industry? Nah, print until it breaks.
But the problem with this thinking is that one customer may be OK, assuming he is the lucky one with colors in his/her design that were able to be reproduced OK, but what happens with the next customer if his colors are not in the reproducible range?
Without a profile you cannot get the best accuracy overall, customer to customer.
There is a reason all the main sublimation suppliers support inks with profiles, otherwise we can all buy the cheap stuff on Amazon or Ebay without the profiles.
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100% correct.But the problem with this thinking is that one customer may be OK, assuming he is the lucky one with colors in his/her design that were able to be reproduced OK, but what happens with the next customer if his colors are not in the reproducible range?
Without a profile you cannot get the best accuracy overall, customer to customer.
There is a reason all the main sublimation suppliers support inks with profiles, otherwise we can all buy the cheap stuff on Amazon or Ebay without the profiles.
Yup, and printing without an ICC you will see "broke" more often
Suggest you disable Powerdriver on your Ricoh and print the file I posted straight without color correction. Betcha it's "broke".
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The issue with your opinion is many of the people starting out in dye sub are not graphic designers and really have no clue what is great colors or not thus they cheat themselves and their customers out of professional results.
To your point about Red and Black.
The human eye is most sensitive to red, and subtle changes in red. It's the reason stop signs, stop lights, fire trucks etc are all red.
Black is challenge too because with unless you have a RIP and print in CMYK then your source image, while it may appear to be full saturated black, it may only be 97% for example. In that case then you are not using "K" for black but rather a composite black made from a mix of the other colors. So you end up with perhaps a brown or dark navy tint to the black. Only when the source image (assuming RGB) is 100% K then you actually use the K ink.
In CMYK (RIP or Postscript required) you can achieve good grayscale simply because "K" is used even for gray colors, it's just a less saturated "K".
Of course even "K" can be bad depending on inks. For example Artainium "K" we used to joke about being "eggplant black" since it had a purplish tint.
In flesh tones it's difficult to achieve good colors across a wide variety of portraits without the linearization achieved by an ICC profile.
AAW go on then,, I'll print it off tomorrow.Yup, and printing without an ICC you will see "broke" more often
Suggest you disable Powerdriver on your Ricoh and print the file I posted straight without color correction. Betcha it's "broke".
Okay,,,
Yer Tiz then.
I printed the one on the left (bottom on tile) with the powerdriver set to, ceramic, trupix paper, 5%saturation, photo, not mirrored.
On the right (top image on tile) was a straight default print through the Ricoh which turned out to be settings of 600dpi (others were available) and inkjet paper (others like plain paper and envelopes etc were available in there too).
Which kinda proves my point, Yes there is an overlay of an orange hue right from the start with default ricoh and if I had the spare substrates to try repeatedly I would make some adjustments in paper etc and could probably get it better. And or knowing what it has a tendency to do would make corrections to the image like I have to to get my laser to print a particular shade of green.
That effect is the default but as everyone can probably agree due to their own experience, every brand of printer will produce that image differently and some will be very very close to spot on and better than the Ricoh default. so who's to say that a particular epson running a particular ink hasn't got it right.
Yer Tiz then.
I printed the one on the left (bottom on tile) with the powerdriver set to, ceramic, trupix paper, 5%saturation, photo, not mirrored.
On the right (top image on tile) was a straight default print through the Ricoh which turned out to be settings of 600dpi (others were available) and inkjet paper (others like plain paper and envelopes etc were available in there too).
Which kinda proves my point, Yes there is an overlay of an orange hue right from the start with default ricoh and if I had the spare substrates to try repeatedly I would make some adjustments in paper etc and could probably get it better. And or knowing what it has a tendency to do would make corrections to the image like I have to to get my laser to print a particular shade of green.
That effect is the default but as everyone can probably agree due to their own experience, every brand of printer will produce that image differently and some will be very very close to spot on and better than the Ricoh default. so who's to say that a particular epson running a particular ink hasn't got it right.
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Dude, it's "broke" without color correction.
That proves your point? No paper adjustment is going to fix that gory output. That output without Powerdriver is uglier than zombie porn.
There is no "orange hue overlay" because the white areas are white in both pics, your inks color saturation range uncorrected are not linear, they are very compressed. Sublimation ink has a narrower gamut than conventional inks, that is why we should use profiles, we need to linearize the range of color.
No one's Ricoh or Epson is going to sublimate print that photo correctly without an ICC, or Powerdriver which has ICC correction built in.
Properly designed printers have some small manufacturing variances which might make each and every unit slightly output color different from unit to unit, but not enough for some to have that "magic" printer that could sublimate print color reasonably accurately across a broad range of art or photos without an ICC.
But your Ricoh does print nicely with color correction.
I rest my case.
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