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Introduction of Photo Output
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| Dye-Diffusion-Thermal-Transfer (D2T2) |
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Dye-sublimation is a process of creating photographs by a printing technique that diffuses dye onto paper. This dye comes in the form of a ribbon and is converted into a diffused gas when heat is applied. The dye is then absorbed by a special receiving layer on the paper. A special print head warms to various precise temperatures and creates different levels of color depending on the amount of heat produced. The print head in the Hi-Touch consumer printers is capable of producing 256 levels of each color (cyan, magenta, yellow) and thus able to create a total of 16.77 million true colors by combining these three primary colors. With a special over-coating layer, the dye layers are sealed into the paper and the image is protected against UV light, fingerprints, and even water! There is no smudging, running, or blotching; prints are dry and ready to touch the instant they come out of the printer!
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| TA (Thermo Autochrome) |
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TA (Thermo Autochrome) technology is developed by FUJIFILM. In TA technique, different dye layers were coated into the paper. To produce the different color image, different specific heating temperature is applied to activate each dye. Repeat the same process for each dye color to product complete photo image. The advantages of TA are no need for color ribbon and ease of operation. The drawback are its lack of endurance for sunlight as the dyes are very reactive to temperature, and its high supply cost.
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| Inkjet |
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Inject printing is the most commonly used for photo printouts, due to it’s convenience and popularity; however, the quality of the printout has also been it’s drawback, even for the most advanced technology, as the printing ink dot and color block can clearly be seem (due to half-tone color printing). For a desired higher photo quality, printer with at least six-colors-cartridges technology is required. Accordingly, the ink cartridge and paper are relatively more expensive, and the printing time is also longer (the higher the printing resolution, the slower the printing time). The most critical disadvantage is that most inkjet printing does not provide waterproof over-coating which reduces the photo storage time as the color would fade away with paper yellowish and image vagueness in less than a month.
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| Conventional Chemicals |
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Under conventional chemical photo developing, light exposure in reaction with light is used to produce image on the photo paper. Even though many of them use the so-called digital developing techniques, the major developing principal is still the same as the conventional chemical developing. Of course, there are few benefits from traditional digital developing, such as lower cost and acceptable image quality; however, the disadvantages are low privacy, environmental concern, and non-instant photo outputs.
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