Highball wants vector images, and I have the same reluctance to buy, and learn, a new program, especially since most of my decals are solid pages of letters and number. It would take forever to draw one page!
I do it as a bitmap file, then upload it to here:
https://convertio.co/bmp-svg/It's free, simple, seems to work on any monochrome image, but doesn't do multi-colored images at all. Everything comes out black on white. You could do color as a separate image file for each color.
It doesn't ask for any personal information, although I have no idea what they do with the images. For my decal pages, I don't care if someone else steals them, so that isn't an issue.
That way, I can do the image in MS Paint, often after generating the text in Excel, save it as a monochrome bitmap file, convert and download it, then email that to Highball. The site will also accept almost any other file format, so you can work in JPG or GIF if you prefer, and have smaller originals.
Most of my files are "reweigh data", also usable for new cars, so a lot of CAPY/LD LMT/LT WT and numbers. You can imagine what an 8.5x11 sheet of that looks like in N scale!
