Do the politics work?

[The Rat]

Recently found an old Airfix CAC Boomerang that was sitting unpainted since before I joined this group, and before I was well and truly a whiffer. Threw some paint on it, but then decided I needed the decals for other whifs. Sooo, who might be looking for surplus fighters in that area after WWII? I'll probably put another shade of green on as a two-tone green camo. The markings are printed on photo paper to see how they would turn out, hope they come out as nicely on decal paper. Numbers are spurious and may change.

[KiwiZac]

Screw the politics, go for it! What a cool idea!

[The Rat]

Paint is still wet, so it looks patchy.





And now I have to ask for printing advice. This close-up shows the problem; pixelation. The printer will do photographs without this, sharp as a tack, so any way I can smooth out these pictures?

[PR19_Kit]

And now I have to ask for printing advice. This close-up shows the problem; pixelation. The printer will do photographs without this, sharp as a tack, so any way I can smooth out these pictures?

It depends on where your source artwork came from and what size it was etc. Ideally you need the original artwork to be as large as possible, at the highest resolution possible.

I tend to do any original drawings 4 x times full size, and then when you shrink it back down again the software smooths out the edges, or it will do if it's any good. I use PaintShoPro 4 BTW.

The other option is to use a vector graphics software package like Inkscape, which many swear by. Personally I can't get on with it and still use PSP4, but vector graphics are the 'tactical nuclear weapon' of this sort of software. 

[Hobbes]

There's no way to really improve the resolution of an existing pixel image. There is a trick you can try:
1. Double or quadruple the resolution.
2. Apply a 'blur' type filter to the image. This tends to smoothen the edges, hiding the blockiness a bit. Try different filters and settings.


I'd try to find a vector image instead. There are loads of freely available vector images. I recently needed a 'British Aerospace' logo from the 1970s, and was able to find that.
Something like 'British flag svg' will limit the search to SVG files (a popular vector format).

If that fails, send me the file for those decals; it'll only take a few minutes to draw that roundel in a vector program.