Sweet set of decals, Kit! They're going to look great printed & in place.
Mine always come out looking weak & pale compared to how I planned them, especially on transparent film. Also seem to get a lot of pixelation, despite my best efforts, using my laser printer.
Any helpful hints?
:)
Guy
It took me quite a time to get a suitable technique developed Guy, and not a small amount of money buying the wrong stuff as well!
I use an inkjet printer, an HP Officejet 6300, that's served me well for about 5 years now. I always use the pukka HP ink cartridges too, they may be more expensive but they're consistent and last longer than re-filled ones I find. For my graphics work I use PaintShoPro 4, not the latest and greatest but it does the job and I know all its quirks and foibles by now.
One of the biggest steps I took was to scale the output of the printer to what I'm doing on the screen and to this end I did lots of tests with a ruler printed out on the screen and then to the printer. This involves always using the same blank page as an output medium. No matter what I print it's always done on that one page with the same page width and height set up on the printer. In my case the scale works out as 7.85 pixels = 1 mm on the printed page, an odd number I know but that's how it is.
I also always use the same paper, obviously inkjet paper in my case, done by the Crafty Computer Paper Co. and I always use their spray varnish as well. Chopping and changing products results in variable quality output, better to use something that you know well I think.
I do most of my graphics 4 x full size on the screen and then shrink them down after I've done al the curves and angles at high resolution. The software does the scaling of the delicate bits and the results equate pretty well with the decals you can buy.
One crucial thing I find is that the printer NEVER prints the same colour as you can see on the screen! There are calibration packages available to do that but they're darned expensive and not for me I'm afraid. I scan photos of the desired item to get the basic colour right and then print a block of 6-8 x 5 mm squares of that colour along the top edge of the sheet of decals. Then I go along the blocks varying the brightness and colour density and after printing the sheet out I can match the printed blocks with the photo. That gives me the correct match and I adjust the colour on the decal to suit. Printing on decal paper always gives a brighter colour than on plain paper I find too, so the final proof print of the colour blocks has to be done on the decal paper itself.
The last thing is practice, practice and more practice..... :)