Screen Printing - June/July 2020 - 25

garment and the print is ready to
wear. (In some cases, a sublimated
print may require additional heat or
steps to properly "set" the dye so it
doesn't come out in the wash).
This process is almost always done
on a polyester garment because it's the
best fabric for absorbing the dye into
the fibers. There are some garments
that have a cotton base with a polyester
coating or poly fibers woven into the
cotton to give printers additional options, but the optimal surface to sublimate is one that will completely accept
the process of dyeing from the ink as it
turns into a gas.
Assuming you're comfortable with
the basics of the process, and you have
a clear idea of what types of garments
you can do, it's beneficial to consider
a few quick tips to make your prints as
good as they can be: learning the color
progression of sublimation, adjusting
your design comps to fit the products,
using the nature of sublimation in your
designs, and understanding outsourcing
vs printing in-house.
LEARNING THE COLOR
PROGRESSION OF SUBLIMATION
For printers who may be first venturing
into sublimation, it's crucially important
to understand how color is adjusted during the dying process. When color is absorbed through the fibers, there's always
a tendency for additional saturation and
other color shifts to occur. A slight variation in the brightness of the fabric that
will be sublimated can influence the final
product, too. The fact is, white is almost

never a balanced white. The white in
a fabric will tend to be slightly blue or
magenta or even green. The slight tint
to your white surface can show up in a
subtle sublimation print and make your
lighter colors shift slightly in accordance
to their tendency.
This is why sublimation prints are
often intentionally brighter and created
with richer colors as these will show less
variation in subtle ways after the process
is done. The key is to spend some time
and properly profile your process all the
way through, prior to doing a production run. Often a printer will not want
to spend the time and money to do this
because sublimation inks are not cheap,
but creating a color profile can save
enormous headaches if it's done well
and be used as a standard for a process
baseline to compare against.
If you're going to do a sublimated
print on a garment, get a sample of the
product or the fabric to test. You can
then do a sublimated profile and see
what happens to the colors after they've
been applied to the fabric. Once you
have this reference, you can go back and
adjust your RIP if you need to make some
curves for that specific item. A good RIP
for a sublimated printer should allow
you to save recipes for different types of
fabrics and coatings so you can have a
streamlined process for a later production run. You may find you have to adjust
your colors or dial back on your black
to keep the design from becoming too
heavy looking and over-saturated.
NOTE: Most companies that sell
sublimated equipment, inks, and printers
have color profiling processes they
JUNE + JULY 2020 | SCREENPRINTING

Screen Printing - June/July 2020

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