Can you recommend soem sofware, please?

[klutz_100]

Can someone point me in the direction of some freeware/shareware suitable for manipulating graphic files to make decals? Specific programmes. I tried Tucows, but don't really know what I am looking for

I guess what I need are "free" alternatives to Adobe Illustrator and Photo Shop

My biggest problem is considerable loss of quality when I reduce graphic images to the size of hood badges and wheel decals.

I really know NOTHING about this kind of thing, but I am assuming that I need to "vectorise" the logo for this to work.

Thanks in advance for any indicators you can provide.

[mike@af]

When resizing your images to decal size and to keep from loosing quality crank the resolution way up. I usually set my resolution to 300dpi.

[Vric]

Photoshop, Illustrator are the software decals maker use. But it's far from easy.

Cheaper, easier solution might be Paintshop pro.

[drunken monkey]

if you're just wanting to reduce image sizes, something small and simple like ACDSee will do it just fine.
if you're looking for a full version of something like photoshop, you occasionally get it chucked in as part of the software packages for certain printers.
look out for it if you're in the market for a new printer.

[gionc]

Basically you shouldnt have loss of quality reducing digityzed pics, yes is an interpolation but you keep and increase the res.

I'm not sure but if you point on adobe.com you'll find some trial version of photoshop and illustrator also. I don't know at your facility but here something will be founded on newspaper shops, often a previsious version for few penny.

If you like to start to make that at a pro level start from the adobe or macromedia stuff

[klutz_100]

Thanks Gents!

Not too much on the shareware front, huh?

I'm wondering if my problem isn't coming out of resoultion/printer settings. I'll play around with this and see if I don't get better results.

Thanks again

[BJ3113]

Try InfranView

[Mystique7]

The GIMP is widely known to be one of the best freeware graphic manipulation programs, afaik.. might want to check it out: http://www.gimp.org/windows/

[JTRACING]

Originally Posted by klutz_100

Not too much on the shareware front, huh?

Hey, search here you will find something.
http://www.download.com/3101-2016-0-1.html?tag=pop

like this for example
http://www.download.com/The-GIMP/300...-10073935.html