diary of an exokutioner (decalling 102)

Part 2

3) Printing of your decals

Ok we are this point. After all the headache of picking the custom, striping it and cutting it all up to hell. You want to print the decals to mold the beast into a beauty? Well here it is. First you have to pick a graphics program that will give you good clean crisp images and can give you good and or high resolution and pixels. I can tell you much about editing your images but it differs for all of us. I have been an artist all my life so you would think it would be easy for me to do some up just like that. Well you are wrong! As with everything we do there is always a learning curve and some curves take years….well let me tell ya I am still learning!!
Pick images that are large in size. That way when you print them you have good res. and the image will be vivid and clean. If you choose small images when you edit them try and boost the res up a little to see if it will clear up a little. This can help but with small images you have to expect most of the time very grainy unusable pics.Haveing large images when you go to edit them down to the decal you shouldn’t lose too much quality as the programs should keep the image at a fairly good res. Its when you go from small to large that you will have problems!. So be sure before you do any resizing save all images…even if you have to save them twice do it!!! Trust me you will thank me for this. specially when you have just spent a good hour editing the image down and cleaning it up for printing…you know cleaning up the edges of the flame tampo or you have a sweet image and you just editing all the background out and finally clean up that pesky area around the key part of the image, you go to resize and then you find you went to small! Ok now you are saying “well just check the edit but and double click undo” what if you made to many moves and can go back??? I know that in adobe Photoshop you can undo backwards about 10 to 15 times….and trust me again when I say that you can make a lot of “not so important” moves and find you cant go back because you colored in that area of a decal 14 times before you decided to shrink the images….ya I am rambling but just to get to this point…Save you work all the time!!!!!

Once you have the image(s) ready to go and wish to print…stop!!!! Always, always do a test print first! And even before that do that do a print preview to see how the images sit on the piece of paper. you can easily go off the page and not even notice til you printed a whole sheet of decals only to find out half of them are any good because the “year” in your Goodyear tampo was cut off by the edge of the decal paper!!!

OK let’s assume you have rendered your images and have a spread of decals laid out ready to print on your sheet. At this point be sure that you have all the settings on your computer right for optimal performance! Be sure that you are printing on the highest or “best” quality as possible. And be sure that the paper options that you have it set to “photo paper”. In Photoshop I set my paper to
“Photo Paper, Glossy” Does a bang up job every time. But with printer comes many different ways to print and you may have better settings that give you the best copy for decals. The printer I have is an HP Photosmart 7350. 2 years ago it was the shiz but now its old and EXo many have to penny up for a new one! Ok you have rendered your images. Resized and arrange the decals to get the most out that area of paper!!!!......oooops almost forgot…when arranging the layout of the decals try not to waste any room! Space them out so you can cut a strait line and save the unused portion for later…no sense do up 3 decals and wasting half a page…this crap can get expensive so conserve!. Ok we have a graphics program we like? I hope!! You now have the images, you have edited them to you like and what you need. you checked the print preview to see that they will print on the paper where you want them to be and finally you have done a couple of testers just to see if ink levels are good and you have done everything to your liking(color tones are good, images are clean and crisp, spaced nicely and ready to go)

Ok now Print away………later Daddy Tired!

KB Kustoms Diecast Customs and Airbrush

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