[JAK]

When I'm trying to make my own decals I've always tried to clean up any image into a solid colour. This is alright with straight lines but gives a pixellated effect on curves.

The decals I've made so far have been quite simple and as our printer will also photo copy with a 50% reduction I created them twice the size and then hand painted the curves before photocopying on to the decal paper. The printer also has a better DPI than paint shop which is why this works?

I'm now planning to do more complicated designs. When scanning photos, etc to create my image should I leave the blurred edges/images that the resulting scan.jpg has? I assume that if the picture looks correct on the PC's screen it will look OK printed.

Grateful any advice.

 

[LMP]

I don't quite understand

Are you having trouble with different tones of bits of decal? Where do you get the images/designs from?

Could you post a pic of the problem?

Sorry if I'm missing the problem.........

 

[gecko]

I think I know what you mean.

The problem with any scanned bitmap image is that it is made up of square pixels, therefore when you have a circular design the curves are made up of very small staggered squares.

The only way to get around this is, is to produce the design as a vector graphic, in a program such as Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Freehand or Corel Draw (all of these are available for both Mac and PC, and the older versions can be picked up on ebay for reasonable prices).

With these vector graphics they are not made up of pixels like your scanned image and instead use lines that create the perfect curve. It also means that the graphic is sharper and can be scaled up and down at any ratio without any loss in quality.

Hope that has been of help.

Cheers

Mark

 

[JAK]

Hope this picture will explain.

When I made my Busby pickup I took images of Busby and cleaned them up into solid colours and although the edges were still pixellated (see big head) it didn't look to bad when returned to normal size.

I now want to do more. With the number 12 it needs to be on a white background. The one in this style is just straight lines so is no problem but how should I do the two. Do I leave a little of the original scans blurred edges or have a jagged edge.

 

[Maltese]

Hmmm. It looks like rather than scanning (unless scanned at VERY high resolution) you would need to use Paintshop, etc. to make your numbers and graphics. If you are an artist you can use the program to recreate logos or images using vector graphics. Simple logos (like Castrol, Mobil) are easy. Then it will be smooth when printed.

-Maltese

 

[JAK]

Hi thanks for the comments.

Been reading help on Paint Shop Pro to find out about these Rasters and Vectors that have been mentioned. It seems that my version of PSP can read Vector images but cannot save them, so unless someone knows of a simple method to get round my problem it looks like I'll have to save up for an old copy of CorelDraw.

 

[Revvvs]

Hi Jak,

How about seeing if you can find a match for those numbers in a TrueType font in MS Word? I believe they are fully scaleable without any pixellation effect...

Paul

 

[JohnP]

I think your problem with the numbers is down to "anti-aliasing". This is a technique for softening edges by inserting intermediate blending colours between the foreground (the number) and background (the blue). You can see this effect around the numbers on the blue image.

When you changed the background from blue to white, the blend colours disappeared but if you had kept them they would not have looked right anyway because of the different background colour.

The best solution I think would be to find a matching font and write the number in black onto a white background. If your software has an anti-alias feature (PSP does) switch it on and it will soften the edges.

 

[Slotrace.dk]

With letters and numbers you should be able to find the right font to make it yourself.
But with the green background it looks like something you've been taken from a photo of the real decals!

 

[gecko]

JAK,

Check this out on ebay.co.uk:

COREL DRAW GRAPHICS SUITE 12:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...7125962411&rd=1

Cheers,

Mark

 

[djshenmuskrat]

QUOTE (JAK @ 6 Jan 2005, 16:54)When I'm trying to make my own decals I've always tried to clean up any image into a solid colour. This is alright with straight lines but gives a pixellated effect on curves.

The decals I've made so far have been quite simple and as our printer will also photo copy with a 50% reduction I created them twice the size and then hand painted the curves before photocopying on to the decal paper. The printer also has a better DPI than paint shop which is why this works?

I'm now planning to do more complicated designs. When scanning photos, etc to create my image should I leave the blurred edges/images that the resulting scan.jpg has? I assume that if the picture looks correct on the PC's screen it will look OK printed.

Grateful any advice.
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Spot on Geko.... Jak, i would seriously reccomend getting hold of illustrator 10. This vector program is industry standard and probably used for the majority of professional design work. if your serious about good results accept no substitute.

 

[LMP]

I can't help you with PSP or CorelDraw Im afraid. If you have Photoshop (elements or edition) or Illustrator I can help you out.

Bitmaps don't work very well. Try with a JPG or TIFF format.