My decal method

[Alvis 3.14159]

I've been asked how I did the decals on my "Royal Newfoundland Constabulary Naval Air Service" Sculpin F.1, so here's what I did.

First, the roundels. I used a standard RAF roundel as the basis. I Google Image searched for one, removed the red center in Photoshop. I then found a line drawing of a cod. I erased all the detail lines, filled it with red, and placed it as a layer over the now centreless RAF roundel. I printed on "Testors White Decal" paper to get a white background for the roundel center, as well as making the red codfish stand out. Clear decal paper usually yields transparent looking reds and yellows. I resized the decals in "Microsoft Word", after formatting them to appear in front of the text. This allows for easier resizing and placement on the page. For some odd reason, when I resize in photoshop, the resolution drops, even when I make things smaller. In Word, this doesn't happen.

I find anything requiring white or yellow is best printed on the white decal papeer. Another option would be to use an already printed roundel, one where the red dot is a seperate piece, that way, all you'd need to add is the image of the cod, or lobster, or pineapple, or whatever. Printing on a white sheet requires careful trimming, and if you look  closely, one of the roundels on the wings isn't completely free of white edging. Drat. The only other white background decals printed were the fin flashes.

The rest of the decals were printed on "Testors Clear Decal paper". I got some nice red letters by being sneaky. You'll notice that most of the red letters appear on a light background. This was no concidence, I deliberately chose a paint scheme that would make those red lettters show up better. If it's a Whif, I've got better control over backgrounds and letter colours, not so much with real world items. In some     cases, I've had to do one or two extra layers of red or orange to get the required level of opaqueness, but often if the background is really dark, you just have to print on white and trim really carefully. U2 serials, red against balck, would be a screaming nighmare to print using this system...I'd not even try!

Microsoft Word is, for me, a nice system for basic text. I can size it pretty much anywhere I want, and there's no image resolution loss. It also allows me to do neat effects, like border/fill colours, which can jazz up a bland script. It allows me to add images or pictures, and size them easily without quality loss. My only beef is that the picture sizing is pretty limited in finess, so if you need an exact size, that can be pretty hard to get sometimes, and may involve a bit of tweaking in photoshop initially to get to size moved up or down a smidge before doing the full resize in Word.


Hope this helps.

Alvis Pi

[NARSES2]

Thanks Alvis

[rickshaw]

For some odd reason, when I resize in photoshop, the resolution drops, even when I make things smaller. In Word, this doesn't happen.

I think you'll find this is because Word utilises a vector based image storage system as against Photoshop which is utilising a raster based bitmap one.  Vector based images are stored as descriptive code which describes the position of points, which the program then knows to join with lines whereas raster bitmap ones are stored basically as a grid with the pixels in the grid being given a descriptive code denoting colour.  Its rather like how you can store a graph - either as an image or as mathematical values allowing the program to work them out and display them.   When you resize a vector based image, the lines remain as lines whereas if you resize a bitmap image, the lines become blocky, having to drop pixels to give an approximation of the image. 

This BTW is one of the reasons why the infamous "face on Mars" appeared and then disappeared - when original resolution of the first images was quite low, computer processing created a shape which humans interpreted as a face, when the latest images were taken at a much higher resolution the computer processing identified the shape as a series of closely spaced hummocks so no shape which we could interpret as a face.

But I digress, going into techie mode to explain the reason why you get what you get when you use different programs to process images.

Interesting process.  I'll have to bear it in mind when I start to print my own transfers.

[Weaver]

Nice one Alvis.  

I've done similar things, so here's some stuff I've found out:

I resized the decals in "Microsoft Word", after formatting them to appear in front of the text. This allows for easier resizing and placement on the page. For some odd reason, when I resize in photoshop, the resolution drops, even when I make things smaller. In Word, this doesn't happen.

I do exactly the same thing, only I draw the initial image as big as I can in Paint, since I don't have Photoshop.

I find anything requiring white or yellow is best printed on the white decal papeer. Another option would be to use an already printed roundel, one where the red dot is a seperate piece, that way, all you'd need to add is the image of the cod, or lobster, or pineapple, or whatever. Printing on a white sheet requires careful trimming, and if you look  closely, one of the roundels on the wings isn't completely free of white edging. Drat. The only other white background decals printed were the fin flashes.

Yet another option is to paint a white area on the model, a fraction smaller than the decal, and then apply the translucent decal over it. This only works well if the outside edge of the decal is pretty opaque (black, ideally). You can do it two ways:

1. make a "positive mask" the same shape as the decal, undercoat the model in white, apply the mask, spray the colour coats, then apply the decal.

2. make a "negative mask" by cutting the shape of the decal out of a piece of masking film, then use it to spray the white circle (or whatever) over the top coats of paint. This needs less pre-planning, but it risks making the decal stand up more.

The rest of the decals were printed on "Testors Clear Decal paper". I got some nice red letters by being sneaky. You'll notice that most of the red letters appear on a light background. This was no concidence, I deliberately chose a paint scheme that would make those red lettters show up better. If it's a Whif, I've got better control over backgrounds and letter colours, not so much with real world items. In some     cases, I've had to do one or two extra layers of red or orange to get the required level of opaqueness, but often if the background is really dark, you just have to print on white and trim really carefully. U2 serials, red against balck, would be a screaming nighmare to print using this system...I'd not even try!

If you can't avoid light letters on a dark background (such as the U2 case) and you don't trust yourself to cut out opaque letters that precisely (I certainly don't!), then another way is to print the opaque letters on a coloured background that matches the aircraft paint job as closely as your PC can manage. Then just cut the rectangle around the letters as close as you can. There might be a slight "shadow" around and between them , but who's to say the real thing doesn't have such shadows anyway? Another possibility is to match the decal to the shape of the surrounding panel lines, making the whole panel "printer black" rather than "paint black".

Microsoft Word is, for me, a nice system for basic text. I can size it pretty much anywhere I want, and there's no image resolution loss. It also allows me to do neat effects, like border/fill colours, which can jazz up a bland script. It allows me to add images or pictures, and size them easily without quality loss. My only beef is that the picture sizing is pretty limited in finess, so if you need an exact size, that can be pretty hard to get sometimes, and may involve a bit of tweaking in photoshop initially to get to size moved up or down a smidge before doing the full resize in Word.

Since I've got to put a whole sheet of decal paper through the printer anyway, I usually put multiple copies of all markings and lettering on the sheet in a range of sizes as insurance. This can work out handy if you them do another aircraft for the same Whiff airforce. If you print a test shot on plain paper first, you can cut some out and offer them up to the model to get a better sense of which sizes look right.

[Alvis 3.14159]

D'oh! of course, printing light letters on a white sheet and making the background match the painted colour..I've done that, yet I completely forgot to mention it. Thanks guys...especially for the explanation why Word works better for scaling. Now I know...and knowing is exactly 44.78% of the battle!


Alvis Pi

[Bill TGH]

thank you  , I'm off to pick up some decal paper on the morrow...