We have a local, commercial sign company (billboards and business signs) that has the capability of making peel-and-stick decals for us.
I took a Hartland Locomotive Works Big John locomotive to them so they could measure the areas where I wanted to place a road name and locomotive number, and they printed up a sheet of decals for me with gold lettering on a clear background and railroad style type font for less than $20, including all of their computer time.
We use them to make HO scale decals for our club, too. The decals are printed on a laser printer in any color desired, so they will not fade or smear if they get wet or are touched like ink jet decals would.
The issue isn't going to be the software to create the artwork, but the ability to print out the decals. You can use any software you can think of to actually create the artwork, from MS Word to Photoshop, to high-end vector-art programs like Adobe Illustrator or Corel. I generally use Adobe Illustrator, myself.
It's the printing them out that's going to be the bugger. Conventional ink-jet printers cannot print white, and you can only approximate gold and silver. The only way to get white lettering using an ink-jet printer is to actually print the space around the letters on white decal paper. The trick is getting what you print to match the color of the car--much easier said than done, even on black. Alas, the ink-jet are also not opaque enough to where the colors will show up very well when placed over darker-colored equipment if you print on clear decal paper.
Fortunately, there are a few guys who will do custom decals for you. Two that I've used in the past are Shawmut Car Shops and Cedarleaf Custom Decals. (Both advertise in GR, I believe.) They both use an ALPS printer, which uses a now-largely-obsolete thermal wax transfer process, but it can print white, gold, silver, etc. as well as full-color logos, etc.
Your other option might be someone like Rail-Graphics, who do traditional silk-screen decals, though you may be in for a large minimum run or set-up fee. There's also the Yu-Du home silk-screen machine sold by Provo-Craft that you can get from Michael's or Jo-Ann's, etc. I don't know how detailed you can get with the screen they use, but it's worth looking into if you've got $400 to spend up front for the machine. It's a silk-screen process, so if you want multiple colors, you're going to have to do multiple screens.
Probably not the answer you were hoping for, but I've not ever heard of anyone being anything more than just mildly accepting of the decals that come from ink-jet printers. The custom guys aren't that expensive, and worth every penny.
Later,
K
Barry,
If you are at all familiar with Photoshop, you can download GIMP. GIMP is a free Photoshop clone available on through the General Public License.
Not quite as robust at Photoshop, but a darn site cheaper.
Bob C.
I'm Looking for a decal program, so I can make my own custom decals. Have any of you made your own decals, if so, what would be a good software program to use? The programs will need to work with windows 7 and a HP Photosmart All-in-One Scanner/Copy printer.
I hope you can help me. Thanks.
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