I'm working on 1/16 T-34. Painted lovable dials for the dashboard in Adobe Photoshop. Actual size of the prints for this scale should be something around 3-5 mm in diameter. Tried to print the dials first on an inkjet photoprinter Canon i9950, then on HP Color LaserJet 1500L - absolute disaster in either case - the dials are absolutely unreadable, look like black rounds with blurred white dots instead of figures.

Any suggestions how to print the dials more readable? Maybe special printer settings? Special printers?

Hi there..

just a quick question. are you resizing the image and then printing, or resizing the image in the printing preferences.

I've found when making small scale maps that you leave the image much larger than you want to print it out and do your resizing in the printing prefereces you get a much better image.

also I take it the dials are black.. have you tried printing in a draft mode that uses less ink.

and if that don't help there is one other option i can think of.. print them out larger than you need so that they are clean.. then take them to a copy store that has some good coping machines and use the copy machine to copy them in reduced size..

Delbert


Delbert

I also would like to know as I am trying to get some for my Flak gun as nobody makes any.

Have you tried here as they make aircraft ones?

http://www.modelflags.com/acatalog/Sheet_&_Individual_Decals.html

Get a good sized image. DOwnload or scan it at high resolution. Drop the image into Word as clip art. resize as needed (as long as you are resizing to a smaller image). Print using the print function, rather than the icon and choose the highest possible reslution. I did this with a blood chit on a 1/35 flight jacket and you can identify the Chinese characters if you use a magnifying glass. This was done with an average inkjet 10 or so years ago.

I tried both, the result are the same, I could hardly see any difference :-)

You are right, the dials are black. I also thought about white dials - but it would be the last option because the originals are actually black.

And you are absolutely right about using coping machine. I tried it too. It definitely increases the definition in comparison with direct printing. But you have to copy while downsizing several times from decent readable print – and it results in uneven decolorization of the black background. It is usable, but it’s for sure not as good as the digital image.

The prints used by modeling guru on the models photographed in the magazines being enlarged on the photos also look better than downsized copies.

There should be a trick over there!

I'll try it tomorrow.

Boris,

If you can send me your Photoshop file, I will redraw it in a vector format which will scale-reduce much better and shouldn't have any pixallation. Look at my profile for my e-mail.

Or you can do it yourself if you can get a copy of vector format software like Corel or Quark or even AutoCAD.

I visited the site. The dials start from 6 mm (I need half the size) and they don't look convincing even at much larger sizes. May be due to the bad scan?

I tried to print out of Word. Maybe it's a fraction better than printing out of Adobe Photoshop.
But still not the desired level of detail.

I've had very good luck w/ dials & decals using AutoCAD.

Instead of trying to do them as decals, try printing them in regular paper and seal them. Then use a circular punch and punch them out. Now using simple white glue or even future, glue them to the instrument panel. I do this all the time with my gauges and instruments on my car kits and you cannot tell the difference between it and once that has a decal. Saves on the frustration level too. You should be able to get a nice clear readable image if you draw it our large and then reduce it. Especially for that 1/16 scale beast! HTH "Q"