Home Made Decals: What's the best resolution for designing?

[lupo]

best resolution is the max resolution your printer can print.
Be sure to check for the optimal printer setting recommended by the decal paper manufacturer, ( this need not be the highest resolution, not all kinds of paper can handle the same amount of printing ink )

If you are going to design using pixel orientated designing programs like Paint, Photoshop, or similar be sure to start of in the highest resolution needed, because enlarging your design afterwards will decrease the quality ( resolution. ): 300 dpi enlarged to 1200 dpi will still use the original 300 dots per inch, only the file will be 16 times bigger. reducing size will cause less quality problems

best for designing logoos are vector oriented programs like Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, Freehand, because these files can be manipulated to any size without loosing quality ( .EPS , .AI files )

[darth9x9]

The higher the resolution, the better. 600 dpi should be adequate but 1200 dpi would be better.

[fmilhaupt]

I use CorelDRAW when designing- since it's a vector-based program, there's no real requirement to consider resolution until printing time.

When I print, I find that printing at 600 dpi on my ALPS printer gives me excellent results.

I have a couple of sets that I prefer to send out to be run by a custom decal-maker (his yellows are much better than an ALPS can do). For those sets, I submit them as a Postscript file.

-Fritz Milhaupt
whose Michigan-prototype decals can be seen at http://www.wyomingyard.com/decals

[Fergmiester]

I'm in the process of designing logos and making decals and I'm curious to know what everyone else is using in regards to the resolution (pix) when designing and printing.

Regards

Fergie