Dye-Sublimation represents a new medium for displaying photos by infusing dyes directly into specially coated products. Because the image is infused into the surface and not printed on it, your images will take on an almost breathtaking luminescence. You've never seen a more brilliant and high resolution print! Colors are vibrant and the detail and definition are unsurpassed. Therefore, photographers need to keep a few simple things in mind when processing images for ordering dye sublimated products. Adding to an image's brightness, shadows, clarity, vibrancy and even sharpness are all bumping up the contrast of the image. For example, what the sharpen command is doing is simply increasing the contrast, but in a slightly different way. Instead of just looking at the image as a whole and making the dark colors darker and the light colors lighter, the sharpen command examines each individual pixel and its surrounding neighbors. If the pixel is darker than the average of it's neighbors, then the sharpen command makes that particular pixel even darker. The opposite process is performed on the lighter pixels. The end result is that edges of color and brightness changes to become more defined, or sharpened. Adding too much contrast to an image can result in halos and banding or posterization. Going overboard on contrast can blow out highlights and lose shadows. The color saturation in highlights fades and the details in the shadows will be washed out. Additionally, areas with too great of a contrast, especially in a small area, may also result in black artifacts or other areas of discoloration in the final product. These types of artifacts produced by overprocessing an image may not be seen when looking at the file on your monitor, however in the high definition and high resolution of a metal print or other dye sublimated product they may not be acceptable.