I was going to ask the same question as I am a newbie in the Decal world. The next version was orders of magnitude better. Many years ago, I got a copy for my wife to use for some graphics work she was doing. And yeah, Don, it's odd how Paintshop Pro goes with updates. For the simple stuff I'm doing, it's fine.

If I have to do so on my Windoz laptop, I use Paint. If I have to do any image manipulation, I use GiMP (on my MacBook). I printed it on our Canon Pixma MP620 and it was perfect. I recently resized a picture of the instrument panel on my wife's 95 Z28 for a project I'm working on. If you're just resizing existing images to print, M$ Word works perfectly well. Here's an example of a decal I just did for a friend on my Canon printer. Just use 'photo quality' printing and coat your printed decal with a clear acrylic or varnish or etc and it will work fine.Īnd, now the disclaimer - I like my inexpensive Epson with DuraBrite ink even better because of the ink but the Canon works fine. It uses the same ink as other Canon printers. I have a Canon Pro 9000 inkjet printer (large format for photos) and it does fine for decals. Gary, Don't believe everything you read about printers. My son works at Dynamic Manufacturing Solutions in Austin now and hopefully, he can use software, and hardware, there to make decals.

I'm thinking of doing a Republic of Texas 'what if' build and I'll need some home brewed decals for that for sure. Now, I've replace that printer with a Canon and I've read that the Canon printers don't work so well for decals. At the time, we had an HP inkjet printer that worked fine for the decals. When I made my first and only home-made decals, for my CSAF Mirage F-1, my son, who is a CAD draftsman, downloaded a free trial version of AutoCAD. Image editors do allow good resizing, but it is just a bit easier in CAD. The advantage to CAD programs is that they are easier to do a precise resizing to fit the scale of your modeler. Another option is a cheap CAD program, like TurboCAD, but they do not handle imported pictures as easily. Both Elements and PSP X 5 are in the sub-100 buck range, typically about 60 to 100, depending on store and whether they are on sale. However, they have since come out with X5, which got rid of the bugs in X4, so I can now recommend the latest version. Hey all I have been using Testors Sure thing decal maker.Īt the time I wrote the article, Paint Shop Pro X4 was out, but full of bugs, and I couldn't recommend it, so I recommended trying to find X3.

Decal Maker Programs: full version free software download. While the full-blown Photoshop is the gold standard of image editing programs, it is very expensive and its cheaper cousin, Elements, is fully adequate for decal design.įind best value and selection for your NEW Testors Custom Decal Maker System For Model Kit PC search on eBay. Another one I recommend is Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Testors decal maker software download