There is nothing more exasperating than to have a picture perfect press job, only to discover that the lettering on the final product is backwards. With sublimation you must always mirror the design when printing. It may seem like a backwards approach at first, but when you think through the production process it really does make sense.
Remember that the image is only on the paper long enough to transfer it over to the substrate. Thus, as it leaves the surface of the paper and bonds to the substrate, the orientation of the final image will flip or “mirror” that of how it was on the paper. If you mirrored the image when you output it to the printer everything works out fine.
You actually create the image in your graphics program in the correct orientation – the flip comes when you output for printing. If you are using the SubliJet IQ or SubliJet-R systems, there is a setting on your PowerDriver printer driver for this. If you are using ArTainium, you will need to manually mirror it when you output to your printer.
Mirroring is a simple detail, but it’s easy to forget when you are just starting out, especially since sublimation is pretty much the only application that requires mirroring. But the first time you print something that is spelled backwards you will understand why you need to mirror the image.