Testors Decal Sheets - Having a Problem with Color Shift

[OldGuy59]

Hi,
Well, I got my new Tripes in the mail, and I've repainted 5 "Little" Tripes as RNAS 10 Black Flight birds. Painted the cowlings and vertical stabs black, and overpainted "Little"s red cross and registration numbers. The PC10 color is not out of a jar, and I custom mixed it as I painted, so none of the five planes looks the same (close, but not the same. I attempted Tamiya XF64 Red Brown [one-ish drop, and XF74 Olive Drab [approx three drops]). I even touched up some spots on the wings and horizontal stabs with this 'color', and it wasn't a bad match.

I did up a graphic in CorelDRAW for the names, registration numbers and large letters for each plane (I'm redoing one of them as Collishaw's N5492 single-gunned plane). In order to get the white letters, I am attempting to use white decal sheet, and putting a PC10 box with 'white' lettering over it. However, after matching the screen and photo paper colors to closely resemble the ARES PC10 on the planes, when I print to the Testors Decal Sheet, the color and the quality of the printing goes to crap.

This is what I came up with, using a 3 mm measure for the large letters:


Again, the photo paper color is pretty close, but the Testors decal sheet is light green, or pinkish-brown, and very uneven. It is almost as if the ink is beading up, and not flowing across the decal material. I will post pictures tomorrow.

Can anyone help me with this? Could it be really old decal sheets?

Mike

PS: I used the below graphic, and printed it to get sample print colors to match up with the ARES Tripes:


When I print on my Epson Stylus Photo 1400, the color that was the closest match to the Tripes PC10 was DV5 (Field Brown), the last color on the left column. That is the RGB color I matched with the above decal. Nothing that came out of the printer on the Testors Decal Sheet came close to any of these.

[Flying Officer Kyte]

What I do because your printer will always have its own colour bias to some extent is to print the sheet first, and then match the paint colour mix to ther sheet colour. It is easier than spending hours trying to get the mix correct on the screen only to find that it translates differently onto the printing sheet. The type of cartridge can also effect the colour blend.
Rob.

[Jure]

Hi Mike,

I usually print a set of stripes, each a slightly different shade of the wanted colour, then pick the closest for the actual decal. Or print another set of test stripes until I get a match. Worked well so far. After the decal is applied, I drop some paint onto the decal edges to better blend it with the underlying surface.

As F.O. Kyte wrote, it is quite impossible to hit the right shade of needed colour on a computer screen. Too many variables involved.

Regards,
Jure

[Guntruck]

As a matter on interest Mike, do you use a colour calibrator on your monitor/pronter?

[Womble]

It sounds like the problem is the decal paper if its printing different colours to how it prints on normal paper. The only way around this would be to print sample colours on the decal paper until you get a match then use the correctly printed colour as the background. Maybe try strips of slightly different colours the top of the sheet so you can re-use the rest of the sheet for decals. I don't know how you get around the uneven printing, maybe set the printer to gloss paper? I've found that usually works best. I've never encountered these problems but i'd try another brand if decal paper and I bet your problems will disappear. I use Crafty Computer paper which is the muts nuts, its a UK company so postage could be expensive to Canada.

Oh almost forgot to say, your designs look amazing!

Good luck with the decals.

Ian

[OldGuy59]

What I do because your printer will always have its own colour bias to some extent is to print the sheet first, and then match the paint colour mix to ther sheet colour. It is easier than spending hours trying to get the mix correct on the screen only to find that it translates differently onto the printing sheet. The type of cartridge can also effect the colour blend.
Rob.

Rob (and Steve),
The screen color was never a consideration, for exactly the reasons you state. That is why I printed the "RFC and RNAS Colours" sheet. That gave me the RGB (red, green, blue) reference for matching to the color on the planes. I also printed the proposed decal graphic on photo paper, to try and ensure the colors would be similar to a decal sheet (which turned out to be a waste of time). The color of the box for the above decal was based on the comparison to the printed sheet, the photo paper, and the ARES plane. Then, once the decals 'matched' the planes, I tried to get the paint color on the models correct. The plane names will be put over the original color, as well, so matching the paint as close as possible was necessary. I think it will be close enough.

I tried different settings on the decal sheet (despite the instructions which said to use 'plain paper' settings), including transparency. The colors weren't even close.

Jure and Ian, I like the test strip idea, but even if the color gets close, the beading of the ink is still an issue. I'll still give it a try, as feeding the sheet through my printer several times (even having let the ink dry for longer and longer intervals between tries), has resulted in ink rolled down the sheet. So I will print on the 'ruined' portion for the test.

Mike :-)

[OldGuy59]

KK,
Pictures. Oh, and when I took the pictures, and laid out the planes and paper, I noticed the white Testors Decal Sheet was not 'white'. An indication that the decal kit may have been on the shelf at the Local Hobby Store for a good, long time.

Anyway, the pictures:
The first is the six tripes, with the photo paper sheet:

The different colors were from adjustments to type of paper, using DV5 Field Brown (RGB 80-73-45 - the darker tone was a readjustment for the photo quality print).

Second photo was the test print in two different colors (DV5 from above, and the browner color in the top left [third from left, over-printed by the DV5 'green'] was DS9 Field Brown [RGB 91-71-44], originally what I though was closest, until I printed on photo paper, not plain, uncoated paper):

In this photo, you can see the RFC and RNAS Colours graphic, and the bottom three boxes are the Testors Decal Sheet, with three tries at getting it right.

This is a close-up shot, zooming in on the above photo. You can see that the fuselages are darker green on the minis. This was because I started with pure Tamiya XF74 Olive Drab, to get maximum coverage of the unwanted decals. I didn't strip the minis first, bad me. I then over-coated with the custom mix. Hmmm... In these photos, it still looks too green. Anyway, even with the focus on the minis, you can see the beading of the ink in the Testors Decal Sheets, and a bit of the 'white' difference, too:


Last photo, with a flash, to wipe out the shadows, and bring the colors out:

This is the minis and the photo paper, not the Testors Decal Sheet.

You may not see it, but I did paint the vertical stabs of the rudders black, too. This was because of a reference drawing posted in another forum, showing the tails black (by David [Cobra] Found here: Information on Black Flight). It helped cover the hearts on Little's mini. I also tried out something different, and used my Staedtler Triplus fine point markers (used with my paper minis) to color in the rudders with red and blue. That actually worked so well, I used the dark brown marker on the struts and propellers. Close-ups of them, when I get the decals sorted out.

PS:
Hmmm... Looking at the thread I used for reference, again, I note that the names of the planes in the painting posted are in small caps (post #7 by Richard [itchy]).
Hmmm... I also note that in the painting on this thread ("The Black Flight" by Terrance Jones), the numbers for most of the planes are black in white boxes? Artistic license? The rudders look black, or at least darker than the fuselages. But the name that is visible is in ALL CAPS.

Mike

[Flying Officer Kyte]

Osprey "Sopwith Triplane Aces" shows them as white letters on the green/brown Mike.
Rob.

[OldGuy59]

Oh Kay!
I finally went through the entire sheet of white decal paper messing up the results and getting nowhere.

As you can see from this picture, the entire decal sheet (left hand sheet) is covered with tests and attempts to get decent results out of the process, including a good color (Also, you can see, at the very bottom, an attempt to print up some red "5"s for my Bf 109 repaint [a spare Molders 109 to be re-decaled to a "Red 5" plane as a wing man]):


This is a close up of what should have been the last print (bottom-most right, just above and to the right of the smeared decal), but the decal sheet had something on it that wouldn't let the ink set properly. This may have been dirty fingers (one of the attempts had a finger print in the middle of it, not sure if it was mine, or not), or the age of the decal material:

The very last attempt on the left sheet was a blur (toward the bottom), as the sheet was rolled up in the package, and the printer head hit the decal sheet and smeared the bottom. Besides the poor detail, this was the last time I tried to put this decal sheet through the printer.

As I had bought a separate package of decal sheets (3 sheets each of white and clear, in a flat package!), along with the decal system kit, I had some more decal sheets to try. To say I was a little leery of more wastage would be an understatement.

This is a close-up of the second sheet, with three attempts at color. The first one is pretty close to the ARES color on the mini (DV5), but not close to the color on my fuselages, after I painted them Tamiya Olive Drab (XF74) and Red Brown (XF64). So, there are two different "green" attempts, XF62 Olive Drab and XF13 J.A. Green:


Note1: The third letter on the decals is for the starboard elevator. I am putting a letter on each plane, whether they had one, or not, as the overhead Skype shots are confusing without them. More about that, when I post my solo "Battle of the Tripes".

Note2: The Red "5"s on the top are for the Molders mini, and I used (I think) XF 65 Field Grey on top, with XF 12 J.N. Grey on the bottom, to try to match the colors on the mini. Then, I used as close a font as possible (CorelDraw: Zurich Cn BT) to match the image I found on line for the markings, and matched the red for the fill, but expanded the outline to .075 to get the white outline. The number is 3mm's and should fit nicely on the mini. I will trim the decal to just outside the white, and position the numbers so that the paint under them and the decal colors line up (cross your fingers that i got the colors right).

(Yeah, Kornatz wasn't part of Molders' squadron, and the camo colors are wrong for the mini, but there must have been a Red 5 in Molders' bunch, and my decal will be close to the mini colors)


The decals have been sprayed with the bonder material, and will be applied tomorrow or Wednesday.

Mike

[OldGuy59]

Finally gave up on perfection, and put the decals on my planes.

The pictures are on this post: What's on your workbench for August

I ended up using two different colours [edit: the DV5 & XF62 decal sets above], as the original colour [of the mini] was different from my overpainting.

Hope you like them.

Mike )

[Flying Officer Kyte]

Finally gave up on perfection, and put the decals on my planes.

The pictures are on this post: What's on your workbench for August

I ended up using two different colours, as the original colour was different from my overpainting.

Hope you like them.

Mike )

Having seen your aircraft on the other thread Mike.(See my comment on there.) I can say that you have not only made a fine fist of the repaints, but answered a question of mine which arose only last night whilst I was reading "Black Flight". I was wondering if the rest of the pilots had the initials on the tail. Hey Presto! There is the answer.
I wondered if Collishaw had Nash's plane 5492 altered to his initial when he took it over?
Rob.

[OldGuy59]

How the Bf-109 (Molders wingman) turned out:


The decal colors (Red 5 background colors) were nearly perfect!

Full info about my 109 "repaints" on this thread: Official Messerschmitt Bf-109 Painting Thread

Mike :-)