Specifications

Dye-Sublimation Printers
Dye sublimation, also called thermal dye transfer, is a printing technique that uses ribbons containing
four colored dyes the printer heats directly into a gas. This way, the four colors are mixed before the
printer applies them to the paper. These printers can produce 256 hues for each of the four colors,
which combine into a palette totaling 16.7 million colors. This results in continuous tone (that is,
undithered) images that come very close to photographic quality.
Dye-sublimation printers produce excellent output, but they suffer in almost every other way. They
are slow and costly, both to buy and to run. They require a special paper type that is quite expensive,
as are the ribbon cartridges they use. However, dye-sublimation technology is quite compatible with
thermal wax-transfer printing; the two differ primarily in the color medium they use. Several manu-
facturers make dual-mode printers that can use both thermal wax transfer, which is less expensive,
and dye sublimation. This enables you to use the cheaper thermal wax mode for proofing and every-
day printing, saving the dye-sublimation mode for the final product and other special uses.
One of the pioneers of this technology, Fargo Electronics, has turned its attention to card printers,
but many other vendors—including Alps, Fuji, Kodak Digital Science, Mitsubishi, Olympus, Seiko
Instruments, and others—have introduced dye-sublimation printers for uses ranging from inexpensive
snapshot printing to high-end graphic arts.
Thermal Wax-Transfer Printers
Thermal wax-transfer printers use wax-based inks, similar to the Tektronix/Xerox solid-ink technol-
ogy, but at a much lower resolution and quality. They apply the ink directly to the page like an inkjet,
not to a drum like a laser does. The process is faster than dye sublimation but is still much slower
than even a color laser. The low resolution (generally 300dpi) means the dots are very coarse and col-
ors are dithered rather than smooth. The print quality suffers as a result when compared to continu-
ous tone output, but it is generally better than the output from inkjets.
In printers that offer both dye-sublimation and thermal wax-transfer options, the thermal wax-
transfer is used for proofing, and the dye-sublimation mode is used for final results. To see the
differences in print quality represented by these technologies, see the Seiko Instruments Web site.
Choosing the Right Color Printer for the Job
Unless you are faced with a very tight budget, you have a wide variety of choices you can make when
it’s time to select a color printer. What kind of color printer you choose should be determined by how
critical you are about the color quality, how long you want the output to last, how fast you want the
output, and whether the output will be considered the final result or is being used as a proof for eval-
uation before a higher-performance printer or typesetter is used to produce the final page.
SOHO users who use color sparingly and print just a few color pages a week can use any of the cur-
rent inkjet printers with resolutions at 600dpi or above, either in a standalone version or as part of a
multifunction/all-in-one device.
If you are an amateur photographer, you might want to consider a specialized inkjet photo printer
with a resolution of at least 1,440×720dpi or 1,200dpi or higher. Even though most of these printers
can be used for text work as well, they are optimized for photos. Some of them use six, rather than
just four, ink colors. If you are looking strictly for snapshot-sized (4”×5”) output, choose from the
low-cost (under $500) 300dpi dye-sublimation printers made by Olympus, Canon, and others. If you
are willing to spend $400–$1,000 or more, you can choose from a variety of specialized models,
including features such as these: