Patent ID: 6184181
Filing Date: 2001-02-06
Classification: B41M,Y10T

Abstract:
A process of controlling the gloss of a thermal dye transfer image comprising:(a) imagewise-heating a dye-donor element comprising a support having thereon a dye layer comprising an image dye in a binder, said dye-donor being in contact with a dye-receiving element, thereby transferring a dye image to an image-receiving, layer of said dye-receiving element to form said dye transfer image; and(b) thermally transferring a protection layer on top of said transferred dye image, said protection layer being applied from an element which contains unexpanded synthetic thermoplastic polymeric microspheres, said microspheres having a particle size in the unexpanded condition of from about 5 to about 20 .mu.m, said protection layer being transferred using a given energy level in order to expand said microspheres until a desired gloss level is obtained.