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Producing Photographs with Laser Sublimation
Sublimating Photographs
If you were to sublimate a photograph, with no adjustments,
the result would probably be very dark and unappealing. To correct
this, you need to understand what caused it.
Photographs are made up of dots, lots of dots. There
are more dots in the darker areas (shadows), some in the middle
areas (midtones) and less in the lighter areas (highlights). Sublimation
causes dot gain, which means the dots get fat. So the shadows get
filled in entirely, the midtones get darker and the highlights don't
get affected much at all. The result is a dark looking photo, which
appears to have increased contrast since the highlights are still
mostly open. Not pretty.
When you start making adjustments in Photo Shop or
Corel Draw, it's a good idea to keep the original intact and play
around only with a copy. So open up the original, rename and save
the renamed version. Now you should have two copies and you can
alter the renamed one without damaging your original.
The quick and easy way to fix this is to simply lighten
everything. This is "Brighten" or "Lighten" in Photo Shop or Corel
Draw. You will need to lighten at least + 40, even though that will
look pretty washed out on the screen. The only problem is that lightening
everything may result in loss of highlight detail. The light areas
can look washed out, although the rest of the photo is pretty good.
Some images do better than others.
To preserve the highlight detail while lightening
the shadows and midtones is a fairly advanced procedure. You use
"Curves" or "Levels," and the object is to lighten the shadows a
bunch and the midtones somewhat while not lightening the highlights.
Photo Shop also has an adjustment called Shadow/Highlights which
generally does an excellent job with just one click.
A photo sublimated on gold or silver can be absolutely
stunning, but it takes a little handling in your image software
to come out right.
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Hilton
Images, Inc.
Finest Quality Laser Sublimation Products