Decal Reproduction

[Timo04]

Hello,

Does anyone on the board know of a good printing service that can reproduce some automotive decals for a non-Lancia resto projects? One of the decals is almost completely destroyed due to it being (very old and dried out) removed but I do have a very clear digital image of it. In general I'm wondering if decals/lables can be reproduced from digital images? Thanks in advance!

[AllthingsZagato]

How many colours are involved?

[SubGothius]

Does it need to be set on a transparent base, or would printing on white suffice? Most (if not all) FedEx Kinko's have Sign & Graphics capability, including cut-vinyl decals (e.g., stick-on graphics that look stencil-cut, such as applied to many cars' back windows) and/or multi-color printed-vinyl decals. I know the latter are routinely done on a white vinyl base, may be available on some/all of the dozens of other vinyl base colors as well. Whilst Kinko's isn't the cheapest option around (kinda the 7-Eleven of printing ;) ), it may be the most convenient for a small, quick job run.

[Timo04]

Thanks so much for the replies! The decal is in black and white, well it has a shade a gray on it too but it is basically all black & white no other colors. The base is white with some small light gray logos, the center section is a light gray and the letter printing on this center section is black. I'm just wondering since the decal is basically black and white if it helps to have a digital image of it to do the printing job? Fed-Ex Kinkos seems like a great place to to start. Thanks again!

[Will]

Do you really mean DECALS? If so, the limitation to being able to do it yourself economically and easily is size. I have some Micro-mark decal stock, it comes on 8-1/2"x11" shhets, and you can order it at Micro-mark:
http://www.micromark.com/html_pages/instructions/decal_instruction.html

I have both the inkjet and laser, IMHO the laser is far superior BUT I don't have a color laser printer so I got the inkjet- in hindsight I'd go with the laser and let a copy shop print the stock for me.

Micro-mark suggests using a micro-dry printer to print white for backgrounds, I have a friend with an ALPS printer but I have not tried it for decals- it does work well for multilayer transparencies that need to be blocked in.

If it's a big decal that needs to be paneled across multiple sheets, you'll want to slice up the the thing in an imaging program.

Whether it's vinyl or decals you use, the process is the same:
a) Scan image at highest resolution possible
b) Vectorize image
c) Clean vectorized image

At this point, the path splits, for Decals:
d) Split image into panels if necessary
e) Print image
f) Dry image (if using inkjet, otherwise laser uses heat and does not require drying)
g) Apply decals (float it, use a punce brush to take out bubbles and a rubber roller to bed it down)

For vinyl:
e) Save image to correct file format for cutter/plotter (usually postscript EPS for cutter or HPGL for plotter)
f) Transfer vinyl to application (backing) sheet
g) Weed out bits that will not be applied (steps f and g may be transposed depending on image and personal preference)
h) Apply vinyl.

I assume your sign guy will handle f,g,h.

The hardest material to work (IMHO) is the "true chrome" (not matte silver but the bright chrome) vinyl. I did the Pininfarina script, Pininfarina "f" badge logos and Lancia shield logos all on one windshield banner in reverse printed true chrome vinyl to go on the inside of my glass and be viewed from the outside (pics in photos section). I scanned the image and did the compositing and editing in Jasc Paint Shop Pro (You can use the free trial version), saved the file as .eps (enhanced postscript) and because I did not have the software to clean the vector image, I sent it over to a friend who's a commercial graphic artist and had him run it through Adobe Streamline. I've never used it, but he told me a $60 bottle of port I sent him as thanks was unfairly generous, so I assume this is not a terribly involved task. One of the other listers may gbe able to clean it for you.

If you get stuck/need help, you can email me the file and I can help you get it set up. It may seem complicated from the above, but it's almost easier to do than explain- the windshield banner took me about three hours total and although I haven't seen what you've got, it's probably no more involved.

-Will

[Will]

Ah, I should add that if it's a grayscale image then your best bet is probably to print it on white vinyl. Colors do not usually print great on vinyl with low-end wide-format printers because they can tend to band, I've never seen this happen in a grayscale image BUT you have to convert the image to grayscale (the original scan) otherwise the printer/plotter will try to make the grays out of mixing colors and you could get both banding, and odd colors showing up as the (not completely UV stable) inks fade at different rates.

[Timo04]

Will

As always thanks for the great explanations. This is encouraging! In place of the term "decal" I suppose the more correct terms would be "label" or "sticker" as this is an original non-glossy/not smooth surface item *about* the size as those standard, pre-printed, postage return mailing labels and of the same rectangular shape.

I would like to avoid some expensive sources *like* Re Originals ect...and rather make the item my-self from a home computer. For me the fun is in the process! It seems that If I get a hold of the right non-glossy white label stock I believe that I can reproduce the label/sticker to something that is d*mn close to the original. If need be I will go the Fed/Ex Kinkos route too, although as previously mentioned by SubGothius this won't be the cheapest solution.

[Will]

I just took a brief look through my stock to see if I could offer you any suggestions, I found a bumper sticker stock that's matte and I think might be about perfect for you. It' in the original packet so I can tell you it's Office Depot SKU#922-811 and I paid $10.99 for it.

The sheets are cut down the middle, i.e. each section is 4-1/4" x 11". It'a a matte, almost paper-texture plastic material and since it's rated as a bumper sticker it must be waterproof and suitable for your application.

PM me if you need a sheet or send me your file and finished size and I can print you a couple of sticker(s) if your size in one direction is 4-1/4" or smaller.

-Will

[Timo04]

The sticker that I am trying to reproduce is 1.5cm wide by 5.5cm long. I was told by Kinkos that I have to create a file on it and that they cannot print it from a digital photo that I e-mailed them. How to a make a file of this image? Will Adobe Photo Shop or some such program work? Please advise. Thank you.

[HF Stinger]

can you post your file that you need reproduced here, or else e-mail it to me. In my former life I used to do just what you are asking...

depending on what the file is, i may still have the capability

[Will]

Tim, since you ssem to want to DIY (and I can respect that) you need to start by getting your hands on a decent image editor. I used to recommend Jasc Software's "Paint Shop Pro" since it was easier to learn than Photoshop and came with an unlimited free trial (fully functional except for a nag screen on startup) and was also cheap (less than $100).

Sadly, the folks at Jasc felt they needed to have all the features of Photoshop, including vector features, and with sophistication comes complexity. It's now much harder to use. I may have an old version on disc I could snailmail you for "trial"- PM me.

Once you have an editor, you need to do two three things to prep the image.
a) convert the image to grayscale (probably want to follow this by reducing color palette to 256 to flatten image and get colors solid)
b) scale the image so that it prints in the appropriate size.
c) export it into a file that is compatible with the printer.

You can skip (c) if using your own printer from your PC, and you can fudge (b) by scaling using the percent scaling in your printer driver if you don't need the size exact. As I mentioned in prior post, don't try to print B/W images without converting to grayscale first. It'll look like crap as it ages.

Or you can take the easy way out- Sean has now offered to help you, and I have the stock sitting here. My fee would be a beer one day when I met you, I'm sure Sean would make a similarly cheap deal. IIRC Sean did the original white face gauge conversion for the Scorpions- I've seen that on a couple of the cars and so I know he's completely capable of slamming out the thing for you and having it look better than your digital picture, as am I. It's no big deal for us, 5-10 minutes maybe. You can learn to do it yourself, and being able to do computer graphics work is a handy skill, but it does take time, and sometimes get in the way of your workflow. My car would've been done years ago if I didn't stop and try to make all of my own parts, so I see where you are coming from.