Homemade decals

[johnbuzzed]

Yep, I made my own, using clear decal material by a company that starts with a "P" and our HP printer.  I don't think I did anything weird with the print setup: I might have selected photo paper as the decal material has a glossy surface.  I'm not sure of the print quality I selected as I printed the images a couple of years ago.  The black letters came out PK, but the yellow are semi opaque- over medium blue, they look olive green- and many of the red letters bled like a stuck pig.  I allowed plenty of time for the images to  dry before I coated them with Micro Scale liquid decal film.  And, I applied the decals many months after they were finished.  Does anyone have some tips or hints or tricks, or are any good tutorials available?  Thanks in advance.

[peteski]

Is the decal paper specifically made for ink jet (not laser) printing? I don't have any pointers on the proper ink jet printer setup (I print my decals on Alps thermal transfer printer), but I can tell you that even if you manage to print the decal correctly, if you apply it to a non-white surface all the non-black colors are translucent and will not show their true colors.  All the standard consumer color printers (CYMK) use translucent colored inks and they need a white background to have the colors properly rendered. My Alps printer is also a CYMK printer but it can also lay down a layer of opaque white ink as an undercoat for the color (CYMK) inks which print over the white.

For more info on CYMK color model see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMYK_color_model