decal making

[John Pol]

Can anybody give a how too on making decals? I`m sure I`m not the only one that would like to know. I want to learn how to downsize make oil filter decals,names murals etc. Any help would be great like what do you scan at and also what DPI setting you print on decal paper.

John Pol

[diymirage]

for downsizing i prefer to use microsoft excell

if you paste an image in there you can hit "format" and in the upper right corner there will be 2 boxes, one for width one for height

this will give you the exact dimensions of the decal once printer

[John Pol]

Thanks for the responced but what DPI do you print them on decal paper?

John Pol

for downsizing i prefer to use microsoft excell

if you paste an image in there you can hit "format" and in the upper right corner there will be 2 boxes, one for width one for height

this will give you the exact dimensions of the decal once printer

[diymirage]

not sure what DPI means

but i set my printer for picture quality and high gloss photo paper

hope that helps

[Happy Martian]

Most home decal makers I've spoken to use 300dpi, and I use the same with mine. 600dpi is nice but unless you're going for picture quality, you may not notice the difference. Anything less, however, and you'll start to notice the pixelation.

[Foxer]

Most home decal makers I've spoken to use 300dpi, and I use the same with mine. 600dpi is nice but unless you're going for picture quality, you may not notice the difference. Anything less, however, and you'll start to notice the pixelation.

Andy's right ... most things don't need to print more than 300 dpi to look good. This is where your particular printer and ink may come into play. It's best to experiment a little. Just print a strip of test decals along the top as you can cut those off and print on the same sheet again.

I use 720 dpi on decals because that's a high resolution listed by Epson. It's all pretty academic though. On decal paper, the ink does not soak in and you have to wait for it to dry before handling or applying the fixative spay. This is where the printer and ink come in. Some ink will flow and run if put on too heavy, i.e., too high a dpi.

[Erik Smith]

On my HP printer, I select highest DPI - which is 1200. I have tested the "normal" (300) and "best" (600) and the 1200 is sharper and blacks are more solid black - no small pixelations of color. 300 and 600 look fine, but if I can go 1200, why not? It does print slower, but I'm not in a hurry. I can also adjust ink levels from low to high and have found I adjust as needed on the decals depending on color, size, etc.

For resizing, I just use Microsoft Publisher. I can insert image and adjust size as needed.

[skulls]

Just a quick added question along the same topic but where do you get decal paper???

[Longbox55]

Most hobby shops should have it, especially those that carry military/plane models and railroad in addition to automotive kits. Hobbytown is a good place to check. Hobby Lobby also carries the Testors line of decal paper, however, it is inkjet only and a bit pricey for the sheet count/size. Decal papers are also redily available online though several sources.

[diymirage]

i buy my paper en ebay

about 11 bucks shipped for a pack of 10

[Aaronw]

Bare Metal Foil and Micromark both sell decal paper, as do a lot of less well known sellers. I've only found one decal film that was unusable, someone gave me some stuff from Vitacal that was really thick, almost like shelf paper, horrible stuff.

I mostly buy from Tango Papa these days, but they only offer laser decal film.

One critical thing to ensure is it is the right kind for your printer, inkjet or laser. The papers are not interchangable in either direction. Inkjet film will melt in a laser printer, and the ink from an inkjet will bead up on laser paper.

You need to seal the decals with a clear coat before use with all decals except for those made with an ALPS type printer.

[1320wayne]

I've been playing with this for a few months now myself. I am by no means an expert but merely an amatuer playing around to make custom decals that suit my own needs for projects. I use a simple, inexpensive inkjet printer to accomplish the task. DIYMIRAGE uses Excel to create. I use Word. You simply find images from whatever source you like, internet, scanned images, etc., and save them to folders in your computer. Then, you open a Word document, adjust the margins to your liking and start inserting images by using the insert link in your toolbar at the top of your computer page. Once you select insert then you simply select "picture" then "from file" and this will pull up a box that lets you select the folder to pull from. Double click the image and that inserts it into your document. It will apply it in the same size that you have it saved under. Once the image is inserted simply click on the image and it becomes highlighted with black boxes at each corner and at each midpoint. Left click and hold any of the corner boxes and this will allow you to resize the image, up or down. Once you get the hang of it then you can insert as many images as a single page will hold. You can do sponsor logos, contingencies, graphics, license plates, etc.. Create whatever you want. Just remember, since you can't print white any image with white in it will only show after applied if your paint job is white and you've printed your decals on clear decal film or if you print onto white decal film and can trim the image right to the edge to eliminate any white around the outside of your image. I hope what I've described here makes sense. Like I said, I'm no expert and I don't know any special computer lingo for what I've described I figured this out simply by playing around with the program and seeing that it will work.

I am including a couple of examples of what I was able to accomplish with this technique.

This is a page of 4x4 logos that I created so that I could have different images for any possible 4x4 builds that I had planned.

This is a sheet of digital camo that I printed onto white decal film and then was able to create camo rally stripes and rocker panel graphics for a project.

Here's how they came out applied to the build.

And the hood graphics was done the same way. As you can see this one involved some time consuming trimming as it was also done on white film and needed to be trimmed right to the edge.

It's so much fun that it's almost addictive. To date I've created almost 30 different decal sheets ranging from graphics to full pages of license plates to sponsor logos.. I hope I was able to shed even a little light on this.

[Kit Basher]

If you're using Word, and just want to do text, check out "Word Art". It's on the list with "from file" when you do Insert, picture. You can do all sorts of wild stuff with letters and numbers.

[LAone]

hey, i have some decal paper i have yet to try out. programs are holding me back.. im not computer literate. i have microsoft office word, is that the same as the ones mentioned above? thanks

[brett]

I use publisher from microsofts 2003 office suite as thats what I have, heres a sampling of what you can do, though note I have not printed out the singluar letter style names as yet

as Wayne said lots of fun, just a few niggles to work out from this end

[Foxer]

hey, i have some decal paper i have yet to try out. programs are holding me back.. im not computer literate. i have microsoft office word, is that the same as the ones mentioned above? thanks

That's the one.