John very kindly asked me about how I do decals recently, and rather than a half hearted reply I thought I'd put together a full guide that anyone on the forum may find useful, so here it is.
To start with I'll say that there are probably better, simpler, faster methods out there, particularly if you can shell out the cash for some of the fancy graphics packages. Also as I get more use to using Inkscape I get the feeling the jobs of paint.net and publisher can be combined in that single free program. But anyway, this is what I do.
I'll start with what I use on the computer side to draw up decals as this is the bit people keep fairly secret.
Software (the different computer programs)
An internet browser (Chrome)
Microsoft Publisher (Word or Google docs will do the same job
Paint.net (this is free to download online)
The first start point is to get the relevant info to draw up the decals. I'll focus on a tractor bonnet decal as I imagine this is most relevant to forum users, and is much simpler to describe than say a whole truck livery.
My first port of call is a google search. For example 'ford tractor bonnet sticker'.
This may throw up exactly what you're after, in this case if I want to decal a 7610 then it's simply copy and paste the image and resize to print (explained later). This isn't always going to be the case though, sometimes you can get close. In this case any of the Agri Parts UK photos would be useful, if it wasn't for those pesky water marks! I'll try and explain how that can be minimised/ removed. In other cases they simply don't exist but we can get the info we need from something close to make exactly what we want. I'll come to that after the waterslide removal.
Waterslide removal.
*This process can also be used to crisp up a real photo, so if you have access to the real machine photograph the decal as square on as possible, and import your photo into paint.net and follow the same process. Particularly useful if real machine decals are faded or slightly damaged.
This is where paint.net comes in handy. A very similar interface to MS Paint that comes pre-downloaded on Windows computer it is just advanced enough to handle the task we need it for.
So I start by pasting the image from google into paint.net (copy and paste it, or save the image and import).
Then the tools we are using are the colour picker, paint bucket, and tolerance bar. Use the colour picker to select the closest colour part to an individual colour, once selected use the paint bucket to fill that area. The paint bucket will turn everything close to the colour you tap on into the colour loaded in your paint bucket. The tolerance bar controls how close the colour needs to be. If your whole page turns one colour the tolerance is too low, if only a few pixels change colour the tolerance is too high.
The ford 7810 photo as copied into paint.net
And after the process of colour picking, paint bucketing and repeating. Tolerances used ranged from 25% to 50% for this task. The black and white where selected from the colour pallet rather than using the colour picking tool to give sharper colour. The red lines haven't been touched here. I would use the line tool to draw a new line over the original rather than try to paint bucket a fine line.
The tools used and where to find them.
With this complete skip to the resize step further on.
If you where unfortunate there would be nothing close enough to use, say if I wanted a 7710 for example (no idea if one exists but it keeps with the theme).
Here we have to draw up the decal. This can involve various tasks. If I wanted a 7710 decal when in paint.net I can use the select tool to copy the 7 and paste it over the 8. If you don't have a good start point I use publisher and an online font finder. To explain this I'm switching to a recent truck build and moving over to MS Publisher although all the features I use are available in Word or PowerPoint, I use publisher because I'm familiar with it and well, this is the sort of stuff it's designed to do.
Publisher allows you to draw a variety of shapes and set them to a colour (it even has a colour pick tool like paint.net). This is used to draw up any background shapes, so the black and red in the ford decal. The font is trickier. I use a font finder site such as https://www.fontsquirrel.com/matcherator and copy an image of the type of font I want to use. It will return either the exact font or something similar. Then hopefully you can download the font, some are free immediately, some you can dig around on the internet and find a free version, some you can't get hold of. Depending on frequency of use you may see it as viable to buy the font, but this is unlikely and you'll mostly settle for something close. A quick google will guide you through the process of downloading a font.
Once downloaded you can use the font exactly as you would any other font already on your computer. Either type in a text box, or create a piece of 'word art' in your chosen font. I would recommend the later as you get a much more manoeuvrable item than a text box.
In the below example both versions of MacTaggart are downloaded fonts, then made into word art, with one colour lined up over the other to create the shadow effect. The MacTaggart 73 is drawn up using varius shapes and colours laid on top of each other, once finished I highlight them all, right click, group, then right click again, save as picture, import the picture and it can be resized without distorting).
That's all I know about drawing decals, well sort of, I've also done things like draw round cab shapes with greaseproof paper, scanned that into the computer, resized and drawn round it to determine fancy liveries on a truck panel for example, but thats going abit ott for now).
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Question
Stabliofarmer
John very kindly asked me about how I do decals recently, and rather than a half hearted reply I thought I'd put together a full guide that anyone on the forum may find useful, so here it is.
To start with I'll say that there are probably better, simpler, faster methods out there, particularly if you can shell out the cash for some of the fancy graphics packages. Also as I get more use to using Inkscape I get the feeling the jobs of paint.net and publisher can be combined in that single free program. But anyway, this is what I do.
I'll start with what I use on the computer side to draw up decals as this is the bit people keep fairly secret.
Software (the different computer programs)
The first start point is to get the relevant info to draw up the decals. I'll focus on a tractor bonnet decal as I imagine this is most relevant to forum users, and is much simpler to describe than say a whole truck livery.
My first port of call is a google search. For example 'ford tractor bonnet sticker'.
This may throw up exactly what you're after, in this case if I want to decal a 7610 then it's simply copy and paste the image and resize to print (explained later). This isn't always going to be the case though, sometimes you can get close. In this case any of the Agri Parts UK photos would be useful, if it wasn't for those pesky water marks! I'll try and explain how that can be minimised/ removed. In other cases they simply don't exist but we can get the info we need from something close to make exactly what we want. I'll come to that after the waterslide removal.
Waterslide removal.
*This process can also be used to crisp up a real photo, so if you have access to the real machine photograph the decal as square on as possible, and import your photo into paint.net and follow the same process. Particularly useful if real machine decals are faded or slightly damaged.
This is where paint.net comes in handy. A very similar interface to MS Paint that comes pre-downloaded on Windows computer it is just advanced enough to handle the task we need it for.
So I start by pasting the image from google into paint.net (copy and paste it, or save the image and import).
Then the tools we are using are the colour picker, paint bucket, and tolerance bar. Use the colour picker to select the closest colour part to an individual colour, once selected use the paint bucket to fill that area. The paint bucket will turn everything close to the colour you tap on into the colour loaded in your paint bucket. The tolerance bar controls how close the colour needs to be. If your whole page turns one colour the tolerance is too low, if only a few pixels change colour the tolerance is too high.
The ford 7810 photo as copied into paint.net
And after the process of colour picking, paint bucketing and repeating. Tolerances used ranged from 25% to 50% for this task. The black and white where selected from the colour pallet rather than using the colour picking tool to give sharper colour. The red lines haven't been touched here. I would use the line tool to draw a new line over the original rather than try to paint bucket a fine line.
The tools used and where to find them.
With this complete skip to the resize step further on.
If you where unfortunate there would be nothing close enough to use, say if I wanted a 7710 for example (no idea if one exists but it keeps with the theme).
Here we have to draw up the decal. This can involve various tasks. If I wanted a 7710 decal when in paint.net I can use the select tool to copy the 7 and paste it over the 8. If you don't have a good start point I use publisher and an online font finder. To explain this I'm switching to a recent truck build and moving over to MS Publisher although all the features I use are available in Word or PowerPoint, I use publisher because I'm familiar with it and well, this is the sort of stuff it's designed to do.
Publisher allows you to draw a variety of shapes and set them to a colour (it even has a colour pick tool like paint.net). This is used to draw up any background shapes, so the black and red in the ford decal. The font is trickier. I use a font finder site such as https://www.fontsquirrel.com/matcherator and copy an image of the type of font I want to use. It will return either the exact font or something similar. Then hopefully you can download the font, some are free immediately, some you can dig around on the internet and find a free version, some you can't get hold of. Depending on frequency of use you may see it as viable to buy the font, but this is unlikely and you'll mostly settle for something close. A quick google will guide you through the process of downloading a font.
Once downloaded you can use the font exactly as you would any other font already on your computer. Either type in a text box, or create a piece of 'word art' in your chosen font. I would recommend the later as you get a much more manoeuvrable item than a text box.
In the below example both versions of MacTaggart are downloaded fonts, then made into word art, with one colour lined up over the other to create the shadow effect. The MacTaggart 73 is drawn up using varius shapes and colours laid on top of each other, once finished I highlight them all, right click, group, then right click again, save as picture, import the picture and it can be resized without distorting).
That's all I know about drawing decals, well sort of, I've also done things like draw round cab shapes with greaseproof paper, scanned that into the computer, resized and drawn round it to determine fancy liveries on a truck panel for example, but thats going abit ott for now).
Next up is re-sizing.
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