Dye-sublimation pre-press with mirror-safe output

Sublimation is an unforgiving workflow on the pre-press side. Every transfer is mirrored, and a single un-mirrored sheet ruins the entire press cycle that followed it — every polyester shirt, every phone case, every ceramic tile in that press run comes out backwards and goes in the reject bin. Pre-press tools for sublimation need to make mirror-on-by-default obvious and un-mirrored-output impossible by accident.

Ink cost is the other pressure. Sublimation ink runs significantly more per square metre than DTF ink, and coverage modelling at quote time is meaningful revenue protection. A shop that knows a specific design will use 11 ml of ink on a given substrate can price accurately; a shop that does not is either under-quoting and losing margin or over-quoting and losing the deal.

Cut-and-sew apparel work adds a bleed-aware nesting requirement. The packer has to honour a bleed margin the operator set; the exported file has to include the bleed area; the visible preview has to show where the cut line will fall.