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History of printing
Woodblock printing 200 Movable type 1040 Printing press c. 1440 Etching c. 1515 Mezzotint 1642 Aquatint 1772 Lithography 1796 Chromolithography 1837 Rotary press 1843 Hectograph 1869 Offset printing 1875 Hot metal typesetting 1884 Mimeograph 1886 Photostat and Rectigraph 1907 Screen printing 1910 Spirit duplicator 1923 Xerography 1938 Phototypesetting 1949 Inkjet printing 1951 Dye-sublimation 1957 Dot matrix printing 1968 Laser printing 1969 Thermal printing c. 1972 3D printing 1984 Digital printing 1993
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A dye-sublimation printer (or dye-sub printer) is a computer printer which employs a printing process that uses heat to transfer dye onto materials such as a plastic, card, paper, or fabric. The sublimation name was first applied because the dye was considered to make the transition between the solid and gas states without going through a liquid stage. This understanding of the process was later shown to be incorrect. Since then, the process is sometimes known as dye-diffusion, though this has not eliminated the original name.^[1] Many consumer and professional dye-sublimation printers are designed and used for producing photographic prints, ID cards, and so on.

These are not to be confused with dye sublimation heat transfer imprinting printers, which use special inks to create transfers designed to be imprinted on textiles, and in which the dyes do indeed sublimate.^[1]

Some dye-sublimation printers use CMYO (Cyan Magenta Yellow Overcoating) colors, which differs from the more recognized CMYKcolors in that the black is eliminated in favour of a clear overcoating. This overcoating (which has numerous names depending on the manufacturer) is also stored on the ribbon and is effectively a thin layer which protects the print from discoloration from UV light and the air, while also rendering the print water-resistant.

For ID card printing, text and bar codes are necessary, and they are printed by means of an additional black panel on the (YMCKO) ribbon. This extra panel works by thermal transfer printing instead of dye diffusion: a whole layer, instead of just some of the dye in the layer, transfers from the ribbon to the substrate at the pixels defined by the thermal head. This overall process is then sometimes called D2T2 (Dye Diffusion Thermal Transfer).