Hey guys so I'm hoping to get some feedback from people who print decals. I've got really into making my own decals lately using Krita a free draw software. After I'm done making them I take them into a program where I then re-scale to the actual Minifigures size without quality lost. However the quality seems to lack after printing. I'm currently using an Epson 424 inkjet printer. The yellow decals seem to be print very ugly seeing the micro dots instead of just a flush yellow, and alot of the emblems seem ridged and not smooth. I've been doing research but don't seem to be finding the answers I need. So my question is will a Laser printer print a sharp clean image out rather then a inkjet or is my inkjet not the highest quality. The DPI on my printer is I think 1446-5000 something not sure if that's a big spec for resolution or cleaner print , but it's the same as some higher priced inkjet printers. Well hope to get some feedback from you guys thanks.

Laser printer might do better because it's continuous color, not layered ink droplets... but you might need to look at the specific colors you're using as well.  I'm no expert, but you might need to change the colors to be more "print-safe" as far as the gamut, or it could simply be a matter of you designing things in RGB and the conversion to CMYK is causing the degradation in print quality with dithering and whatnot.  Probably the first thing I'd try because it's the easiest is to re-design some of the items you've done but start the new file in the CMYK color space (assuming Krita supports it) and see if you get better results.

I found that lines printed on decal paper were not as sharp as lines printed (with the same printer) on regular document paper. The print seems to bleed into the paper. This is fine for colour blocks but not fine details. I think any printed customising suffers from a similar problem though. If you look at custom printed jobs close up, they always appear to be a bit blotchy rather than the smooth continuous prints on real LEGO or other PAD printed customs.

 

7 hours ago, deraven said:

Laser printer might do better because it's continuous color, not layered ink droplets... but you might need to look at the specific colors you're using as well.  I'm no expert, but you might need to change the colors to be more "print-safe" as far as the gamut, or it could simply be a matter of you designing things in RGB and the conversion to CMYK is causing the degradation in print quality with dithering and whatnot.  Probably the first thing I'd try because it's the easiest is to re-design some of the items you've done but start the new file in the CMYK color space (assuming Krita supports it) and see if you get better results.

Thanks I'm gonna try to save it to CMYK cause I did notice one decal that had a light normal yellow did print out nice rather then the mustard yellow that looked blochy