NEED ADVICE on printing custom Figure Decals

[Dovakkhiin]

Hello there People !

Long story short i am just starting to customize my figures with printed decals and im having problems with the quality of the prints, they are not detailed and the colours arent right, so about my printer : to be honest its not mine but of my parents, its an hp color laserjet CP1215 (printing resolution 600x600 dpi) I assume i need a printer with much higher resolution and with more colours then 3 ? Should i get a Photo Printer ? Because photo printers are pretty cheap for the resolution they offer, well as you can see im a noob and i need your help guys hahahah. I hope someone can help me out and have a great day !

Best regards, 

Dovakkhiin :P

[deraven]

Welcome to EB, Dovakkhiin!

There's a lot of variables to talk about when it comes to custom printing decals, but that color laser printer should work fine, at least as a starting point.  My guess would be that the decals themselves are not using the right color space for matching the colors to Lego colors (RGB vs CYMK), and that the graphics are not vector-based or otherwise high enough resolution to be scaled and printed properly.

Take a look at some of the topics here for inspiration and how-tos:

 

[Dovakkhiin]

Hi there deraven !

First of all, thx for welcoming me to EB ! Im pretty frustrated with the resolutions of that printer to be honest it just dont looks good ma hahahah , what printer would be a good level up for decal printing ? there are photo printers available on canon for about 150 Euros/Dollars with a color palette of  6 colors and 4800 x 1200 dpi for the resolution. Would you recommend getting such a printer for decal printing ? Yeah the color problem is probably because i dont use the right color space. I know its kinda nooby but i made my decal on Paint, is it bad to do that on paint because its a raster and not a vector ?

[deraven]

Unless there is something actually wrong with the printer, 600x600 is fine, and color laser is absolutely better for printing decals than an inkjet photo printer.  I really think color space and raster images are the real problem... plus I don't recall how much control over print settings you have in Paint, but the default file DPI used to be 72 or 96 (PPI).  So if you're basically printing a 72 or 96 DPI, raster image, in RGB on a CYMK 600 DPI printer, you're not going to get great results.  

Before you think about getting a new printer, you need to work out the other pieces.  If you have the correct file and output DPI in the correct color space with a vector image and at that point the output from the HP color laser still isn't up to snuff, that's when I'd take the deeper dive at the hardware.  I've printed decals with an older 300DPI resolution laser printer that look great.  The only place that the lower DPI will really show even with vector images is in gradients, so if you have that in your designs a 6-color/photo printer might be better for that, but inkjet still isn't ideal (unless it's dye sublimation on appropriate media, maybe) if you're going to be handling them much and not just having them set up as a static display.

I'm no expert, but in my experience that's what I've found.  

[Dovakkhiin]

Alright first of all thanks for all the useful advice i appreciate it mate ! Alright so I am going to try creating a decal on GIMP and with the right color palette (CYMK), that should do the trick right ? :P

[Dovakkhiin]

Damn hahah i just searched a bit on the internet about the things you mentioned and i must say i underestimated what i takes to make good decals hahahah , what would be your advice ? Should i use Photoshop ? Because photoshop has got options for cmyk colors and its easier to convert to vector graphics i think

[Jody Meyer]

There are many good tutorials on here. I use photoshop as well, illustrator is also a good option. 

[Dovakkhiin]

5 hours ago, Jody Meyer said:

There are many good tutorials on here. I use photoshop as well, illustrator is also a good option. 

Hey Jody Meyer, thanks for your advice.

So I took the decal which i created in paint and in photoshop i converted the colors to cmyk and i also changed the dpi to 300 and also i tried with 600 and 1200. But still the results arent that great in terms of the resolution  and also the coloring, I took 2 pictures of my minifig and the torso to show you guys and ask you if the torso is printed in the max resolution a 600x600 dpi printer can print, and also ask for an advice with the coloring, maybe which cmyk palette i could use in photoshop, I hope someone can help me out its really not that easy to get this right hahahaha. 

https://imgur.com/IXLAQLw

https://imgur.com/DJD8tdK

[MAB]

The other issue is what are you printing on? Some decal paper is really bad for small decals. Larger prints from a distance look fine, but up close cheaper decal paper can really bleed ink. So even if your decals print well on normal paper, they can look terrible on the decal paper.

[deraven]

Still a lot of variables you're dealing with.  Why don't you try printing some decals that have the correct color matching, file type, resolution, etc., and see how they come out?  Take a look at the last post in this thread for a a couple examples you can try (and you'll note that it's set up at 300 DPI and looks good printed at that resolution):

If you can find the correct print settings to get those coming out OK, then you can move on to how you need to set up your own files to have the right results.  And as MAB mentioned, the type of decal stock you use matters as well... but one thing at a time!