my email dialogue with a foreign decal firm

[Plumcrazy Preston]

On 1/24/2021 at 11:53 PM, Russell C said:

 

Not understanding your first bit, and maybe I'm out-of-date on my graphics knowledge, but vector files are vector files. Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW or some new variant that the industry has come up with lately that works identically. What is "vectorized PDF"?  I've turned text pages with photos and graphics drawn in my CorelDRAW program into PDFs just so I could email them to people to read, but I'd assume that means an automatically loss in quality to some degree, which is irrelevant to somebody printing out my page (a resumé or whatever) on the other side of the country to share with other folks.

When it comes to ALPS printing, you might have a very large and unfair generalization there. In the two or so decades I've heard about it, I don't think I've ever heard anyone say the quality of printing was substandard. What you might have in this instance is a single faulty printer and/or an operator who didn't run the machine correctly or did something to the artwork. If the file got degraded in some way, that would only make the problems worse.

Clarifications? You asked for it.

 

The original artwork file was a BMP file I authored and then it was modified in a "vector" program by a third-party, copyartwork.com online, for a nominal fee. Then that file was saved as a PDF and sent to me and that file was sent to the decal company, bedlamcreations.com by me. Essentially, the decal printer made my decal set from that same PDF file I received from copyartwork.com. The "vector" work done by the third party was to make everything razor sharp around the edges and ensure the colors were spot colors, Pantone. I want nothing short of razor sharp edges on the decals I'm to place on my home-built models. I paid this bedlam creations $57 and the decal sheet I got looked like crapp for the amount of money paid. I need a highly competent decal printing concern. 

 

The BMP file from copyartwork.com did not look corrupt at all. The image was razor-sharp when examined by me in Adobe Reader and zoomed in. I believe this bedlam creations is a crappy outfit. That's all. I need a printer and operator with top-notch equipment and top-notch skills. I'm going to have to consult with the German bloke when he opens up for business again this spring. I hope he won't disappoint me. 

Edited January 26, 2021 by Plumcrazy Preston

[peteski]

Alps neither understand or deals with Pantone colors.  It is a standard CYMK printer, but there are tricks that can be done to achieve solid (non-dithered) colors by layering multiple layers of 100% saturation inks. This techinique is not something mentioned  in the usr's manual - these were developed by hobbyists, after lots of experiments.  I woudl not expect anybody but a hobbyist who owns an Alps printer (and understands all the tricks) to use the Alps spot color method to get good quality results.  Also there is no choice of Metallic silver hues with Alps - there is a single Metallic Silver cartridge and it only produced one type of metallic silver hue.  if you don't like it - tough!

I suspect that you really have to notch down your expectation as what you can get from small custom decal manufacturers.  If you really want to get top-notch decals, you need to hire a "real" decal company which will mix the inks to your exact specifications, and use either the screen-printing method, or a $100k printer to produce your decals.  Company such as Microscale can print custom decals (IIRC in minimum qunatity of 250), or one of the absolute best decal printing companies: Cartograf in Italy.  Then your fantasy models will have absolutely best quality decals.  Yes, it will be expensive.

[Russell C]

15 hours ago, Plumcrazy Preston said:

...The original artwork file was a BMP file I authored and then it was modified in a "vector" program by a third-party ... Then that file was saved as a PDF and sent to me and that file was sent to the decal company ...The BMP file from copyartwork.com did not look corrupt at all. The image was razor-sharp when examined by me in Adobe Reader ... 

Well …., what happened here is you sent the 3rd party outfit a BMP file, and in a technical sense they sent you back a PDF file with a bitmap image in it. When you don't have a vector art program to view the artwork, you'll never see what it truly looks like. There's literally no reason at all to send you a PDF file other than to provide something that you could open up in Acrobat Reader to see what it will approximately look like, and Acrobat may have actually sharpened up as you zoomed in just for computer screen clarity, which doesn't really mean anything. What you needed was the vector file alone to send onto the decal printer. Back when I worked as a graphic artist at two places that created photo etched / cast metal decorative items / nameplates, the two kinds of file types that I hated to receive were BMPs, JPGs or TIFF photo files with their inherently unclear pixelated edges, and PDF files of corporate logos with their own inherently unclear pixelated images. Whenever I could, I urged our sales people to go back to their customers to demand that the artists they used share the original vector files for what they wanted us to reproduce, otherwise our place would have to create the vector files we needed at extra cost to our customers to ensure a super crisp product result. When our salesmen couldn't get our customers to deliver, we were often under a mandate to use the pixelated images as best we could to save time and expense on our part, and the results were always crumbly to some extent, depending on what extent we could put into sharpening the images via photo alteration - contrast /color adjustment, etc.

[Plumcrazy Preston]

I really stepped into something I know nothing about. It's what used to be cheap plastic models for a shelf back in the old days for crying out loud. I didn't anticipate printing decals to be something of "rocket science".  

 

Edited January 27, 2021 by Plumcrazy Preston

[peteski]

1 hour ago, Plumcrazy Preston said:

I really stepped into something I know nothing about. It's what used to be cheap plastic models for a shelf back in the old days for crying out loud. I didn't anticipate printing decals to be something of "rocket science". 

I think that it is finally sinking in that these are just plastic toys, not some super-precise and very expensive equipment.  Same applies to decals.  You aren't building a precision stopwatch -  just a plastic toy for crying out loud.

As far Alps printers go, here is an example of decal I designed  and printed (in Corel Draw, in vector format of course) for a fellow club-member. For size reference, the model is 1:25 scale. All the graphics (including the license plate, and the bumpersticker on the back window) were printed on Alps.

 

All the graphics (including the tire lettering) are Alps printed decals.

Edited January 27, 2021 by peteski

[Cowpunk]

I can see: the dotted lines through some of the windows, the incomplete printing on some of the window frames, and some missing ink in some of the fox (?) ears. It looks like the printer wasn't printing at a high enough resolution to avoid these defects. I've bought Alps-printed decals that were junk and i've got some from Gooche that are pretty darned good.

[Plumcrazy Preston]

https://highballgraphics.com/

I got their email address from their website and sent them a message asking about custom decal work with an attachment of my artwork. A guy named Jim replied, said my artwork looked good and told me how to place the order. I submitted an 8" x 13" PDF reworked in three Pantone colors, transparent background and vector curves done from BMP by a third-party called Copyartwork.com. One decal sheet for me was $39.00 including shipping. 

I examined the sheet with my magnifier and it was good for the most part. There was a big human hair embedded in the sheet but the decal can be trimmed off the sheet and miss that hair. Most if not all decal printing firms fail to print decal sheets in 100%-dust-free environments.  Many decals on my sheet are duplicates, extras, so I have spares in case one of the decals was botched in printing. The "M" in one of AMERICAN ORIGINAL objects has jagged edges at the bottom center of the character but the duplicate looks perfect. Laser printing presses powder toner onto the surface of the sheet with a hot drum. Under the magnifier, the white objects will appear to have the texture of flour or snow. 

I tried email-communicating with that German guy, Carsten Glaubitz, at DecalPrint but he is hard to communicate with in English so I said the devil with him and did more searching and found this Highball Graphics.  Highball Graphics has no issues with trademarks like Kenworth or BOEING. They print a lot of model railroad rolling stock (locomotive and railcar) logos after all. 

I tried using Josh Muma at Bedlam Creations twice since last December and he botched the decal sheets completely both times. The first time it was due to using colors not Pantones. The second time there were a lot of jagged edges around the white letters and lots of hair and dust embedded in the printed sheet. He used that ALPS method which may print white objects sloppy as if it were white touch-up paint for cars. 

White objects especially seem hard as the devil to print and do so neatly.

Highball Graphics claims at their site to use this printing method:

We print using an OKI C942 Printer. This is a 1200 dpi toner type printer. Black and White toner on 5 separate drums to produce high quality images. It has a much tighter grain on the process prints. It prints in 1 pass with excellent registration. Quite different than the old ALPS ribbon printing technology that we previously used. Using any commercial decal setting solution these decals will snuggle down over details much better than their older counterparts.

If you wish to use this company, it's best to visit their site to get their contact information first and ask what they can do for you by email. They mainly do stuff for model trains but they can print stuff for static model and R/C model hobbyists as well. 

I submitted my PDF file with a transparent background. I have posted an image of my decal artwork over Plum Crazy purple again to show you all here. Now, i will have to see how nice these decals will look applied to my finished models still in progress. High Ball Graphics has some instructions for proper decal application at its site. 

Edited May 3, 2021 by Plumcrazy Preston

[peteski]

I'm glad that you finally found a company that produced decals that you are happy with.  Yes, I've dealt with Highball graphics when they still used Alps printer for some of their decals (and some were laser-printed).

One thing that a laser printer can't do is print metallic gold and sliver (which Alps can). But if you do not need that, then a 5-toners laser printer is the way to go.

[Richard Bartrop]

On 1/27/2021 at 1:56 AM, Plumcrazy Preston said:

I really stepped into something I know nothing about. It's what used to be cheap plastic models for a shelf back in the old days for crying out loud. I didn't anticipate printing decals to be something of "rocket science".  

 

It's always been.  The model companies just get to spread the setup costs over a few thousand kits.