So James.........how do you deal with white lettering or the white areas of the transfer? Alps printers are getting rarer and rarer.
You haven't really answered the question. How do you deal with the white areas? How would you trim around lettering? I'm not sure what your reference to Norfolk Southern means. Please explain further. I've tried printing on white decal paper with limited success, depending on the project.
I’m not sure I understand your question @WoundedBear.
When I need to have either a white area or white lettering in the decal, I use a white paper decal sheet for this.
The areas I want to stay white are simply not printed over, the whitepaper shows through those areas only the rest of the decal has ink over it.
The white background of the paper serves as the white color in your image (decal).
As for trimming around lettering, I have not found a need to do that.
I use a program called
paint.net this lets me lay my rail car directly on the scanner and I scan it and save (at 100%) as my first layer.
I then then capture my image of choice either from personal files or off the internet.
Next I superimpose the image on my car, sizing and positioning, until I’m satisfied with the look.
This becomes my second layer, again saved at the highest resolution.
This process is repeated until (one layer per each image/decal) I have all my artwork where I want it.
The first layer is then removed (car body).
This is then saved again as a final layer (highest resolution possible) and becomes my master.
With the program I’m using, I can click any area of the car body and copy that color to the decal sheet as necessary, this helps to blend in the finished product.Trimming the decal us usually done with a special pair if scissors dedicated to the task, or using an Exacto and a straight edge.
Colored pencils can be used to hide the white edge, I have also used black ink, and also used paint (dry brushing).
Generally I trim right on the edge of the image.
Reference to Norfolk Southern;
Was an instance I needed to make custom NS decals for a RPE4D slug I bashed.
Decals were printed as a negative in so much as only black ink was used, the white of the decal paper served as the white ink portions of the decals.
Decals were trimmed right at the image edges and dry brushed with black paint to hide the white edge.
I hope I have answered all your questions, if not feel free to PM, as I really hate to hijack this thread further.
http://www.getpaint.net/index.htmlMy apologies to the OP for the thread hijack.