Printing decals

Old thread, but still relevant. Here are the decals I made using my ink jet printer. I did not set the printer to "photo" or "high quality" and that was a mistake. It wasn't too bad as it was mostly black on white. The is an arial font originally for H0 scale; that is why I print it with four pages per 8 x 12 inch sheet. In this case, I sealed the decals with a light coat of Testor's Dullcote.

My red colored "just in time and safe" slogan did not work out. I don't think ink jet is opaque enough for that. I just used the black print on the red, which is incorrect for the prototype.

Here is the finished car. Thanks to Wolfgang Dudler for his inputs. Notice the scratched part of the vertical portion of the "L" in "Terminal." That was caused by scratching the decal as I applied it, so handle the ink jet decals with some care.


I used signal red, reefer yellow, and reefer white.

 

I am a little late to the party, but I thought that I would share my technique. I used to work with Photoshop, but now use PhotoImpact. I personally don't care for the way the interface seems to be heading with Photoshop, but who am I for Adobe to care?

When printing anything that might require a delay print, I start by making a blank image that is sized as a full sheet. If you can not print to your margins, you might want to cut the size of the image down slightly. So, you have a big blank image. It is your canvas that you will use to place your images.

Each item that you want to print, add it to the blank image as a new layer. Positioning is important. Remember that the top of the page is printed first, so place your images at the bottom of the "page". When you have everything that you want to print, go ahead and print the whole "page.

After printing it, save the file. I give it some sort of meaningful name, so that I can find it later. Then, I take a plain manila folder and put the sheet in there and write the filename on the tab. That way, I know which filename matches up with the sheet.

Next time I want to print, I make sure that all layers are visible (so I know where I have already placed things) and add the new ones - once again, starting from the bottom. Once I have everything positioned, I hide the layers that I have already printed and put the remaining sheet in like I normally would. Then, save the file again, if room permits and put the remnant back into the folder for next time.

Rinse, repeat, as needed.

Hope that helps someone out. I have an Alps, but this should work for any printer, assuming that you take your margins into consideration when laying out your initial page.