Not happy with Alps decals

[Joetrain59]

I remember seeing a thread about Alps printed decals not being too great, as if lo-res. Got some today for L&HR cabooses. Yellow lettering with red bands/dots. Not a solid color.
  These are for N scale use. Is too small the problem, larger scale printouts would be better?
 Thanks again,
 Joe D

[peteski]

The quality of the Alps decals depends on the skill level of the person using it.  There are tricks that can be used to eliminate those halftone dots.  But even then, some of the color shades are impossible to reproduce. If the person who printed those decals just used the default color settings which uses halftones to produce a huge palette of colors, those decals will not really be usable for very small lettering or striping (for the exact reason you describe).  Soe darker colors can be printed using Alps halftones because the dots are not readily apparent. But halftones are very visible in lighter colors.  I've own Alps printers for over 15 years and they are capable of some amazing stuff.

I printed some graffiti decals few years ago - those were done using halftone colors (using the finest halftone setting). People who bought them found them acceptable. But those were fairly large images (no tiny letters or striping).



For more info see https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=28716.msg303693#msg303693