Can not see the pictures?, please click here

English version

Versión en español

Version française

Image Pro International proudly announces the IPI 2007 Awards for the Best Professional Dye Sublimation Printers on the market

We tested 17 Professional Dye Sub Photo Printers, starting at $150 to $2890. Some are very similar; some are indeed very different and unique. Of course, depending on what you are planning to do, you should look at different aspects of those professional photo printers. If you are a professional photographer with substantial profit margins you might be looking more at quality and functionality, where as if you are a retail outlet you might be more interested in cost per print, speed and multiple image sizes. In order to be objective and impartial, we focused in characteristics that could be measured: Cost per Print and Speed.

Category: COST PER PRINT

The most inexpensive Dye Sublimation Printers in 4x6

The most inexpensive Dye Sublimation Printers in 5x7

The most inexpensive Dye Sublimation Printers in 8x10

Category: SPEED

The fastest Dye Sublimation Printers in 4x6

The fastest Dye Sublimation Printers in 5x7

The fastest Dye Sublimation Printers in 8x10

The selection is larger than ever on the market when it comes to Dye Sub Photo Printers. We have selected 7 companies which offer high quality photo printers at competitive prices: Mitsubishi, Kodak, Sony, Shinko, ICI-Imagedata, Hi-Touch and Olympus.

Comparison Chart: Speed

Printers / Sizes / Speed

Comparison Chart: Cost per Print

Printers / Sizes / Cost per print

Printers / Sizes / Prints per Roll or Box

(1) ATTENTION: The CP-9550DW-U ONLY WORKS WITH THE Mitsubishi DPS Kiosk 7000 AND THE Mitsubishi DPS Click 5000

(2) 2 rolls per box 

Aditional characteristics

Technology and Quality: All these machines use dye sublimation thermal transfer and offer a resolution between 300 dpi to 346 dpi (for the Mitsubishi CP-9550DW). All these printers offer superb print quality, our tests on all the machines show photo lab quality without any modifications or enhancements to the image file.

Unique features: The Sony SnapLab is more than a printer; it is in fact the all-in-one printing machine for the professional on the go. You don’t need a computer, eventhough you can connect the SnapLab via USB 2.0 and use it as a regular dyesub printer. The SnapLab includes a screen, a card reader, software and a printer in a very small package, making it the perfect event machine. The Olmec OP610 offers a very nice and unique feature, a new patented business card media that creates great opportunities for stores which can, for the first time, offer customers high quality photo business cards directly from their premises at a fraction of the time, capital investment and set up cost of other printing technologies. The Mitsubishi CP-9550DW offers a unique Postcard paper with features a postcard back print to it. The paper has the regular photographic thickness and comes in a roll as well. The photographer can easily offer customers a Photo-postcard without having to glue or mount it on an other support.

Drivers and interfaces: All 16 printers are Windows XP and 2000 compatible, the Mitsubishi printers also come with a Macintosh OS X 10.3.3 driver. All of them have a USB 2.0 interface for ease plug in to any computers.

Some definitions

Sublimation

Is when a substance transitions between the solid and gas states without going through a liquid stage, dry ice is an example.

Dye-Sublimation

Uses high heat and solid dyes to produce photo lab-quality images.

Dye-Sublimation printers

If you looked inside a dye-sublimation printer, you would see a long roll of transparent film that resembles sheets of red, blue, yellow, and gray colored cellophane stuck together end to end. Embedded in this film are solid dyes corresponding to the four basic colors used in printing: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and blacK. The print head heats up as it passes over the film, causing the dyes to vaporize and permeate the glossy surface of the paper before they return to solid form.

So the main difference between this and other types of printing has to do with heat. The vaporized colors permeate the surface of the paper, creating a gentle gradation at the edges of each pixel, instead of the conspicuous border between dye and paper produced by inkjets. And because the color infuses the paper, it is also less vulnerable to fading and distortion over time.

Dye Sublimation Vs. Thermal Wax Transfer
Thermal wax transfer uses the same transport mechanism as dye sublimation, but uses a wax-based ink, not a transparent dye. Like other color printers, it puts down a solid dot of ink and produces shades of colors by placing color dots side by side (dithering). Wax transfer prints faster than dye sub and consumables (ribbon and paper) are less expensive, but it does not produce photorealistic quality.

Dye Sublimation Vs. Inkjet Printers

One of the main advantages that dye-sublimation printing has over Inkjet printers is its ability to print a superior range of colors. The Ink in inkjet printers cannot change color and it is also opaque. This means that inkjet printers simulate a range of colors by varying the size of the colored dots against the white background of the printing media and also by placing the colored dots next to each other, they cannot be laid over each other. Dye-sublimation printers are able to change the temperature of the thermal elements in its head 256 different degrees and therefore can produce 256 different shades of each of the colored panels. More importantly, due to the properties of the dye, the dye is transparent and colors can be laid on top of each other, combining to produce 16.77 million different shades. Coupled with the final laminate coating, prints from a dye-sublimation printer look as if they have been developed from a photochemical lab.

Another advantage over inkjet is the prints are dry and ready to handle as soon as they exit the printer. The printing process is also fairly quick as the thermal head doesn't have to sweep back and forth over the paper. As the dye never enters a liquid phase, the whole printing cycle is extremely clean. There are no liquid inks to clean up, nor any heads to get clogged making dye-sublimation generally a more reliable technology over Inkjet printers.

Previously, the use of dye-sub printing had been limited to Industrial or High-End Commercial Printing.

Dye-sublimation is starting to become particularly useful for event photographers as it allows them to produce and sell lab quality prints at the event they are attending very quickly with a minimal amount of hardware.

Definitions of Dye Sublimation on the Web

A photographic looking color print created by heating dyes on the substrate instead of using inks. Often used for proofing.
www.colorconcepts.com/glossary/d.htm

An imaging method for transferring controlled quantities of printer ribbon dye onto a plastic card.
www.duracard.com/glossary.htm

A type of printing process in which a dye ribbon is heated by the print head creating a gas that hardens onto special paper. This creates soft-edged spots of color that melt into each other and give the appearance of a continuous tone photograph.
www.dpcorner.com/all_about/terms.shtml

A printing process using small heating elements to evaporate pigments from a carrier film, depositing these smoothly onto a substrate.
www.globalimaginginc.com/resources/glossary.shtml

A process of printing images in black and white or colour where the image is formed by evaporating the colour components of the image, from films of colour, into paper - the paper passes under films of each of the secondary colours together with black. Frequently a plastic film is then fused to the surface of the image to provide protection to the image and longevity.
www.view-link.com/dir-d.html

A continuous-tone printing process in which a solid printing medium is converted into a gas before it hits paper.
www.zacsdesign.com/edu/basic_multimedia_glossary.htm

Color printing technology that produces images by means of gaseous dyes through a thermal printing driver.
www.inkcartridgesworld.com/_glossary.html

A printing procedure which produces colour images using heat - the hotter a printing head is, the darker the colour is produced.
www.fotoserve.com/glossary/d.html

Looking for a Business Opportunity...?. You found it!!:

We would love to help you promote your business. Send us a link to your website and we will add yours to our Weblink list:

The IPI 2007 Awards for the Best Dye Sublimation Printers