I have a question for anyone who might know the answer. I've often wondered about making my owm water slide decals. One of my next models I will be doing will be a F-14 tomcat from Revell. I don't want to used the decals supplied. I would much rather use the jolly roger decal set. I looked up on the internet for different decal set and i found it. The problem was the decals were $12.00 w/shipping. That was the price of the mode! One day at the hobby shop i found Water slide decal paper for my computer. I havent tried printing any yet on the decal paper. But when i saved the picture from the internet of the J.R. decal set I printed it on regular paper and the resoulution was horrible. So I have a couple of questions for some of you experineced modelers.

1. Does anyone know of a website that has decals available for free that has a good resoulution?
2. I've found a few on the internet. Does anyone know how to fix the resoulution, or just clean up the image
3. Do I need to re-set anything on my computer to print these images

Any additional information is appreciated

Thanks, Jay

Hi Jay,
I do sometime "home made" decals for the reason that I would like to build some historic models but the decals for those I look for are not available on the market. To answer your questions:

1. I did not find out a website which I could download the artwork in order to print it on the decal paper, usually there is only the picture in low resolution and the aftermarket decal is not cheap, due to the drawing job, manufacturing process and product's marketing. However, I find out some decal set with a reasonable price on Ebay.



2. The best way is "do-it-yourself" the artwork, usually I work with the Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator software for the artwork. I scan the aircraft fuselage and wings at 100% put them in black then use them as the melts layer, with my artwork on another layer, I resize it then position it on the melts layer as same as I build the model, this is an easy way to avoid the complicated calcul of the scale.



3. To print the "home made" decal, I use a good inkjet printer (1440 dpi) and I save my artwork in Adobe Acrobat PDF file. With the printer drive and Acrobat Reader, I select the paper as semi-gloss paper quality, printer resolution at 1440 dpi and print it in low speed.



I am working on my 1/48 VNAF Skyraider with the arkwork that I do with Adobe Illustrator.



HTH

Now that was some good information. i have a question for you though if your still up for answering them. How would I approach sizing these decals?

Hi Jay,

There is two ways that you can resize the artwork:

1. In the software: most of drawing software has a tool that you can use to make it bigger or smaller.

2. By printer: As I save my artwork in Adobe Acrobat PDF file, when I print the decal, I can select an option in realsize (100%) or bigger or smaller by percentage of the printable zone.

HTH

Cool, thanks!

Jay

You make it sound so easy. I don't build airplanes anymore, but back in the day, this sure would have done some good, of course back then you could pick up decal sheets for $1.50 each and most LHS carried them, so making your own was for the experts only.

Hi Steve,

Oh no! Steve, why don't build more aircraft? I agree with your opinion, "homemade" decal is not easy to do but I read a feature of our Armorama mate, David W. Aungst on the Making Custom Decals:
http://aircraft.armorama.com//features/11

That came one day when I had the idea to build a Vietnam aircraft and I did not find out on the model market a VNAF decal set for my model. I find out this feature on Armorama and I just go on for a try.

I don't have a ALPS printer as David's feature but an Epson inkjet printer, so I try to make the home made decal on white and clear decal inkjet paper, the markings in white on clear carried film such as numbers and letters that I can not do with my inkjet printer, I bought them from my LHS (Verlinden, Superscale, etc).

About the artwork, yes, it's not easy to draw on my computer, I began to draw with some primary sharp as a rectangular, a triangle, a circle then came with some curve lines... Finally I could draw the USAF markings, a darkblue circle with a white star inside then came with complex drawing. Lucky me, using the last drawing software such as the Adobe Illustrator CS, I have a huge tool to draw, for example, drawing a star was easier than using the Illustrator release 4.0 that I had tried 15 years ago and let it down.

To print my artwork on decalsheet, first of all, I use the inkjet label paper, this paper is for office use to make the sticker, in order to do my fit test before print it on decal paper, I cut the artwork printed on label paper, sticked it on the model and resized my artwork if it was bigger or smaller. There a lot of wrong artwork on label paper went direct to the trash...

After that, I have also the color correction cause of the RVB color on the computer screen is different to the CMYK printing process (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow and Black), that was WYSINWYG (what you see is not what you get!) although my artwork was set in CMYK process. A lot of decalsheet went direct to the trash...

The inkjet decalsheet is not cheap, it costs over $3.00 a half letter sheet at my LHS cause of the import tax, it comes from USA but after throwing a dozen of these decalsheets in the trash, I get know how to set the color, to print my artwork, etc.

Now I buy the decalsheet directly from USA, it cost me about $0.75 a sheet+shipping = $1.00 USD. To resume the cost of "homemade" decal, it costs about $4.00 USD in average (decalsheet + ink) but the different that I get was my model built on historic aircraft as same as many other Armorama mates had done with their scratchbuilt aircraft, AFV...

So please, don't let down building aircraft!

Francois.