Image quality for decals

[Dale Allen]

I have successfully made 2 pens recently with waterslide decals on them.
However, I was not real happy with the quality of the print.
I use an older version of photoshop and I cannot figure out how to reduce an image and keep the resolution high. I always end up with jagged edges of the pixels. Like this image. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[thewishman]

Is it possible to get a larger image and make it smaller, rather than blowing up a small image?

 

[Dale Allen]

Sometime yes. An image from my camera is fine but when I take something from a webpage it is apparently of such low quality that shrinking it causes this problem.
One would think that if you squeezed the dots down the quality would be better.

 

[liljohn1368]

I don't use photo shop. But with CorelDraw X6 you can re-sample a pic to a higher dpi that helps this. Another thing when you search for the pic you are looking for. Make sure to specify high resolution. 99% of the time when a pic is put on the net it is done so with a 72 dpi (dot per inch). A pic doesn't get good quality until at least 300 dpi. I owned a printing shop until about a year ago and ran into this all the time with customers sending me pictures to print in an email. Hope this helps.

 

[larryc]

I almost always use images from the internet with no problems. Always use images that you reduce in size. Never increase or you will get the "Jaggies"

 

[Dale Allen]

OK, I think I have this figured out now.
In case someone else can use this info.
When you resize an image in Photoshop, at least in my older version, you have to NOT do the resampling.
I turned off the resampling on this image that was over 12" wide and changed it to 2.5" wide while keeping the proportions.
When done, the jpg image has the same file size as the original but when it prints the size is at 2.5" wide.
I printed one out and looked at it with a magnifier and it looks far better than the way they were printing before.
I don't understand it all but it works for me!:biggrin:

 

[Mr Vic]

The resolution is also a key. The higher the better but what is the highest resolution (dpi) your printer will print. Keep it at least 300 dpi, Unlock the document size by clicking the little knot/chain on the right. you only want the height and width locked so it will maintain the aspect ratio then manually set your resolution.

 

[kenlholley]

For good quality sports logos try here.
Chris Creamer's Sports Logos Page - SportsLogos.Net

 

[Mike V Florida]

When it comes to printing there are two basic types of drawings; raster and vector.

The most common is raster. a raster drawing is made up of tiny "boxes" or dots. When you enlarge the drawing you enlarge the boxes and you see in the first post of this thread.

A vector drawing is made up of mathematical formulas to define a line and where it goes. A vector drawing when blown up simply increases the numbers and there is no jagged edges.

You need a program that handles vector images to manipulate them. Programs like Photoshop, when working with raster, will often break up the larger boxes into smaller ones by resampling the image as we see in the instructions above.

Hope this clears things up a little as how and why.

 

[rd_ab_penman]

I use MS Excel or MS Word and Insert photo/image. Then open Picture Tools to resize all my photos/images for decals.
This allows me to keep the aspect ratio and original resolution.

Les