Decals

[kaiser]

Could anyone shed some light on the process for making up decals? Do you take photo's/graphics and edit, then ask a decal/vinyl printer to make them up? I know Gil is the resident guru, but he's pretty busy at the moment and was curious anyway.

 

[ridevintagemtb]

What I do is a get a really good scan or photo of what I'm after. If it something simple enough, you can die-cut it on vinyl: I import that image in to Adobe Illustrator and go to work "tracing" the outlines. This takes time to learn to do well. Basically you need to create a vector so the computer can tell the printer what to do. Then that printer will cut out your decal on vinyl.

For everything else, I'm not certain.

 

[gil_m]

Pretty much hit it on the head...

If you want to cut the lettering you need to turn your graphic~ .jpg/.bmp into a vector image, most people will re-draw the image/text in a sign software package or Corel/Adobe, both work but take time to get right.

The vector files can then be cut on a plotter, this is only really good for text no smaller than 8-10mm in height and ideally single colour

Basically if you want a good image you have to go through the same process with multi-colour images and these then need to be colour split to create artworks for Screen Printing or colour match and digitally printed after creating a cut line

..Now you guys know why I need a holiday