Darker black for homemade decals?

[titino]

The only problem I had with printing decals was when I used refilled cartridges, with everything original I never had problems. I show another example

[titino]

With refilled cartridges

[titino]

What I have noticed is that JPEG images do not maintain pixels, being visible in large areas, as is the case with this topic.

[Chariots of Fire]

I'm glad I still have an ALPS printer that works.  I always print on clear decal paper.  Get mine from Sunnyscopa.  Not that it matters but I've had great results with this material.  ALPS always needs a solid undercoat of white in order for the colors to be solid as well.  Otherwise when you print without the undercoat the decal all but disappears on the model.  That's because the image is simply a series of small "x" that get blended together from the four print cartridges.  But the end result looks solid enough and is very crisp.  I've made some very small decals for 1/87 scale vehicles and they are very clear and readable.

I've also copied images from internet files into my graphics program for use in emergency vehicle decals.  Sometimes the images are such that I can print them directly and with very exceptional results.  Other times, the image includes a background that cannot be deleted so the image has to be redrawn separately for printing.

Just my experiences over the years with an old ALPS MD1300 and a Micrographx vector based drawing program that has to be more than 20 years old by now.  They both still work with my old Windows XP computer.  Micrographx was bought out by Corel, I believe several years ago.

[BK9300]

28 minutes ago, Chariots of Fire said:

I'm glad I still have an ALPS printer that works.  I always print on clear decal paper.  Get mine from Sunnyscopa.  Not that it matters but I've had great results with this material.  ALPS always needs a solid undercoat of white in order for the colors to be solid as well.  Otherwise when you print without the undercoat the decal all but disappears on the model.  That's because the image is simply a series of small "x" that get blended together from the four print cartridges.  But the end result looks solid enough and is very crisp.  I've made some very small decals for 1/87 scale vehicles and they are very clear and readable.

I've also copied images from internet files into my graphics program for use in emergency vehicle decals.  Sometimes the images are such that I can print them directly and with very exceptional results.  Other times, the image includes a background that cannot be deleted so the image has to be redrawn separately for printing.

Just my experiences over the years with an old ALPS MD1300 and a Micrographx vector based drawing program that has to be more than 20 years old by now.  They both still work with my old Windows XP computer.  Micrographx was bought out by Corel, I believe several years ago.

I’ve never made decals before, but have had to make images smaller for various reasons, to use in documents, sometimes losing a degree of resolution.  How have you been able to maintain the readability as you’ve reduced images you want to use as decals?

[Chariots of Fire]

4 hours ago, BK9300 said:

I’ve never made decals before, but have had to make images smaller for various reasons, to use in documents, sometimes losing a degree of resolution.  How have you been able to maintain the readability as you’ve reduced images you want to use as decals?

Actually the resolution is not adversely affected.  In fact, as you reduce the size of the decal the imagery stays the same.  That is one reason if I am making decals I start with something much larger and shrink it down by percentage.  The only thing that has to be adjusted somewhat is line width.  If you start with a thick line, when the image is reduced, the line thickness has to be reduced by hand to keep it in perspective.  Not nearly as difficult as it may sound.

For example If I am making a set of letters for the doors of a truck and the letters have an outline of a different color starting out with a thick outline while the letters are large I have to reduce the line width of the outline otherwise it overwhelms everything else.

In the example above all of the lettering was done on the ALPS.  Note the black outline on "MASHPEE".  It is relatively thick but goes well with the size of the decal.  If I shrunk it down to the size of the letters on the door, the outline black would have to be dropped down to a thin line width as you see on the "FIRE" and "RESCUE" letters.  Incidentally the town seal on the door was directly imported from an on-line image and printed directly.  One of those cases when the direct image was recognized by the Micrographx program.   The resolution stayed perfectly clear.

[BK9300]

33 minutes ago, Chariots of Fire said:

Actually the resolution is not adversely affected.  In fact, as you reduce the size of the decal the imagery stays the same.  That is one reason if I am making decals I start with something much larger and shrink it down by percentage.  The only thing that has to be adjusted somewhat is line width.  If you start with a thick line, when the image is reduced, the line thickness has to be reduced by hand to keep it in perspective.  Not nearly as difficult as it may sound.

 

Thanks for all the info, Charles - I've got lots to learn about making decals.

[peteski]

12 hours ago, BK9300 said:

I’ve never made decals before, but have had to make images smaller for various reasons, to use in documents, sometimes losing a degree of resolution.  How have you been able to maintain the readability as you’ve reduced images you want to use as decals?

With bitmapped images like JPG, PNG, GIF, etc, it is usually the other way around. If you take a small bitmap image and blow it up,  the quality is reduced as you can actually start seeing the individual pixels enlarged making the image look rough.

I wonder if what you are doing is changing the image resolution (dpi or dots-per-inch). If you have a 300dpi image and resample it to 72dpi, the image will be smaller, but you will also loose details.

Then of course the printers physical resolution is the limit of the amount of detail it can print.  If you have a 3200dpi image and the printer you are using onlky has a 1200dpi resolution, the printed image will lose detail.