Model Railroad Decals from Tichy (Multi-Scale)

[nkalanaga]

Tichy can certainly print white, as both of my sheets are entirely white.  He now has a third file, in color, and we'll see how it turns out.

Mike:  I noticed the slightly raised printing when I first took my first sheet from the envelope.  I don't think it's thick enough to use as rivets, though, which was one of my early ideas.  They actually look very nice once applied, and I've felt similar lettering on some RTR models.

[Sokramiketes]

Do you know if colors are halftoned using CYMK inks or are they solid spot colors (like the silk-screened decals use)?

It reminds me of the direct printing method that MTL and Kato are using now. 

[peteski]

It reminds me of the direct printing method that MTL and Kato are using now.

Oh, so the colors are printed as a random scattering of CYMK inks like the direct-to-substrate ink jets MTL uses?  Interesting . . .  If that is the case then yes, the thickness f the multiple applications if inks (especially with white undercoat) is apparent. 

[nkalanaga]

Update:  There seems to be a problem with printing my color sheet, but I have no idea what it is.  I received an email today asking for a JPG copy of the original bitmap file, and, if possible, the Excel files used for the artwork.  I have no idea why either would be needed instead of a PDF.

The JPG was no problem.  Most of this sheet was done with either "throw-away" Excel files, where the text was altered enough that there was no point keeping the original, or wasn't made in Excel to start with. 

The only thing I can figure out, and the email gave no clues, was that the combination of white and other colors requires a file format with separate color layers.  They do require that, in a mixed sheet, any white be assigned a color not used elsewhere, which they will convert to white.  If the combination is the problem, I can easily alter my sheet, replacing the white portion with black/color material, but it could be an issue for those wanting color+white heralds.

Or, that might not be the problem at all.  As I said, there was no hint of why they wanted the files.

[peteski]

Doing decal artwork in vector format makes things so much easier (both for the designer and for the printer).  It also results in highest quality decals.  Each curve or object cna be individually edited, separated, duplicated or just manipulated without quality loss.  JPG?  I would not use that for any of my artwork.  Hmmm....

I keep a lot of copies of my artwork, even some intermediate steps  (never throw anything away). I learned logn time ago that once I delete something permanently I will develop a need for that info. I even keep several years of full backups handy so I can retrieve something which I did decode to delete it (large capacity USB disk drives are *REALLY* cheap nowadays).

[nkalanaga]

Peteski:  That's why I don't use JPGs for my decals.  I don't have the fancy graphics programs, so no vector files.  I do convert my Excel-derived PDFs to PNG files, which are supposed to be a "lossless" format, since Acrobat won't save pages as bitmaps, but most of my work is done in bitmaps, to keep as much of the quality as possible.  The all-white PDFs I sent printed fine, within the expected resolution limits, so I suspect it was the combination of white with other colors that is causing the problem.

I probably won't hear back from them until Tuesday, due to Labor Day, but it won't be hard for me to find something non-white to fill that part of the page.  The white stuff will be moved to another sheet, so I won't lose anything.