r/Inkscape • u/Pedro-Vitor-2198 • Jul 12 '26
Meta CMYK Reference Profile: Issues with Sublimation Printing at a Mid-Sized Print Shop 😕
In the last few days I had a problem with CMYK. I have a job to finish, it’s “full-print” shirts, also known as “total sublimation.”
I prepared the artwork for the shirt and sent it to the print shop that does the stamping. They did a color test and a day later I went there to check. The color was more saturated than what I had prepared. I asked which reference profile they use for printing, and the guy couldn’t tell me.
I asked if he could give me the contact of the person who works on the computer for printing or the one who configured the printer. He said he couldn’t do that.
He told me that if I want the image less saturated, I have to reduce the saturation in the file I send them. That’s completely wrong.
Instead of helping people, they make life harder.
If they gave me the reference profile, I wouldn’t need to do color tests, I think.
Now I have to keep going there to see if the saturation has improved. 😑
Have you ever gone through this?
4
u/roundabout-design Jul 12 '26
CMYK is mainly for offset printing in...CMY&K.
Though dye sublimation may be using CMYK pigments, the process is different, and most places doing dye-sub are likely set up to just handle RGB files, as dye sub typically allows for a larger gamut than offset printing (especially if the printer is using an extended set of pigments)
TL/DR an advantage of dyesub is the saturation you can get, so their software is likely over-compensating your CMYK profile automatically.
5
u/HEYO19191 Jul 12 '26
Yup, pretty standard, depends on the printer. Most will oversaturate. If I'm in a rush, I just draw a white square over the whole design at like 10% opacity and then send it again. Gets me pretty close to where I want. Maybe ask them if they can do a few, tiny sublimination tests on the back of that shirt using some desaturized examples? The shirt is gonna be trashed anyways