Decals

[uwbpet]

I wonder if anyone out there has done decal work on PS? I have generated an aircraft nose art pic from a photo on PS and it turned out great. Here is my problem: I am printing with inkjet on clear decal paper. The colors consist of deep reds and blues but the olive drab color of the aircraft bleeds through and washes out the subject. I have also printed on white background decal paper, but the subject is only three quarters of an inch in height with a lot of tiny sharp edges making cutting around the subject almost impossible. Inkjets do not print white, so printing a separate white background is out. I have tried printing different colored backgrounds but with little or no positive results. Decal paper is very expensive and cannot afford much more experimentation. If anyone has a solution, I would very much appreciate hearing from you.
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[emarts]

I'm not sure because of the very small size. But try taking your design to a vinyl sign shop. Maybe they can cut the decals from self-adhesive vinyl.

[Cameraken]

Hi Uwbpet

Could you not paint the area under the decal in white instead of Olive green?



Ken

[RichardBrackin]

Ask around and see if the sign shop has one of the new Gerber Edge printers.
Sounds like the design is 4-color process. The Edge will leave too large a rosette pattern and you probably won't be happy.
If you could work the design to be only spot colors then you will be much happier with the output if you use the Gerber Edge.

If it's Photoshop document you probably won't like the output on the Edge.
Save out as a BMP or a TIFF.
If it's Illustrator vector art then save as the lowest .eps version you can and set postscript to level 2. The Edge uses Gerber's own Omega software and it massively sucks.

We have the older model Edge (1996 - 1997) but it's booked solid for the next infinity-plus-one months or I'd do this for you.

The Edge can print quite small onto clear adhesive 2 mil (.002") adhesive-backed stock. This is adhesive is not activated by dipping the decal in water.

The Edge can be told to put down a white (or blue or black or green or ...) primer coat.

There are a few printers that are beginning to see the benefit of printing white if for nothing more than a primer coat like you need.

The real trick will be the contour cut around the perimeter of the decals.
Depending on how complex the cut is ... you may be better off just grabbing an X-acto. We've got a bunch of high precision cutters and I would hate to know I had to cut something like that out with them.

Good luck!!

[Craig Walters]

uwbpet,

welcome to RP!

i can think of two things that might be causing you problems with your printing from what you describe. your 'bleeding' might just be a setting you can change in your printing software/windows before you print. on mine, there is a setting for both how much ink is applied and how much drying time you want to allow as the work is progressing. there is also a lower to higher quality setting. if you are getting colors bleeding into each other, lower the inkflow setting and raise the drying time. this shld reduce the bleeding.

if you're still getting 'bleeding', it may not be bleeding at all. it may be that you're printing in rgb where the printer only wants cmyk. your bleeding may then be actually 'out of gamut', meaning the colors you are trying to print arent available to the printer as such, and it substitutes in something close, making your colors wrong. to correct for this you have to go back into ps and alter your colors so that they will comply with the cmyk specs. i'm no expert on how to do that, so hopefully someone else will come along and explain this better.

i'm also going to throw in that if decal stuff is anything like other transparencies, you need to make sure that it's put in the printer tray a with a certain side up. only one side can be printed on, the side with the texture (which actually takes and holds the ink). the other side is smooth and will bleed profusely. you probably know that already, but i'm just trying to cover all bases here.

Craig