Colour matching / ICC Profiles Waterslide decals

[ClaireHelen]

 

Hi

Am new to the site and have been looking at the previous posts on Minifigure customisation with much interest.

I started recently making my own custom designs for friends initially just using as simple drawing app before moving on to Photoshop and a graphics tablet. I am happy with my torso designs now although I need to do a little work to rationalise what the printer can actually print out in terms of detail.

I originally printed the torso designs onto glossy stickers (Avery Bottle labels) and covered these in clear tape before cutting them out and applying them and was happy with the results I was getting.

I am now starting to move away from the stickers to clear and white background (for darker torso's and those where I need white) waterslide decal paper.

I am now using a Canon Pixma Pro 100s printer which produces stunning images when it has the paper and the ICC profile of it to match etc and am now at the stage of experimenting with printing to the waterslide decals which is the expensive bit.

I usually print an A4 sheet of deigns with very subtle colour differences between the torsos with colour code underneath it and compare to the LEGO torso I am trying to match with about 20 other variations on it to find out which one matches the actual lego colour when the sheet is printed. For this to work I have to print out these test sheets onto the decal paper so I can see what it looks like. My monitor calibration looks good when comparing a printed photo to the screen image when printed to the correct paper but for the waterslide it is more difficult and neither photoshop or the printer knows the paper being used.

Also the resolution I print at I need to play with to get the best looking figures to a good macro shot whilst also accepting that in the absence of the printer knowing that sort of paper and having the ICC profile for it, any change in resolution can affect the outputted colours as well.

Before embarking on another expensive exercise on test printing to decal sheets at different resolutions and for all the colours I want to print at I was wondering if you had any advice on where to start ?

I am guessing the decal paper could be considered as a matt or glossy photo paper rather than a plain one?

What do you set the paper output to in the printer when you print to decal paper to get the best colour matching ? 

Many thanks

Claire

[MAB]

You really have to do the tests and apply the decals to lego parts to see what the colours look like when placed. What looks right on a light part can look bad on a darker one. What looks good on white can look bad on yellow, and so on.

But then LEGO has this problem too when printing directly onto parts:

As above, they cannot get white right when printing onto coloured parts.

 

I suggest applying decals to bricks (maybe 1x8 bricks or similar if you have them) rather than to minifigure parts to test - they are cheaper and have larger flat surface areas so easier to compare for example 8 different colour block tests in one go under the same lighting conditions.

 

[ClaireHelen]

Thanks.

 

I think I will need some trial and error. I will try the clear and white decal sheets and print some torso designs to them in variations on the colour I want and then see which ones best work and apply to some bricks to test them out 

 

thank you. 

[ClaireHelen]

In the end I got a professional to produce a profile for the white waterslide paper for the printer driver or the drawing software to use and has made an amazing difference. I can now print the colours I see on screen at last. Now just need to test out what happens to them over various brick colours when applied.