ALPS printer limitations?

[willimo]

I know there are some.

A while back, I had a friend print me out a heap of decals on his ALPS printer, but one of the limitations of his set up was that it wouldn't print white, and then also other colors on TOP of the white. Also, I wasn't terribly thrilled with his resolution. For example:

This:


Was printed out, the girl wasn't over white nor her resolution good, so it turned out like this:



So what I wonder, is this a limitation of all ALPS printers, or just his setup? Would I have to print out the white background as a separate level, and apply one decal on top of the other? And are ALPS printers capable of 300dpi+, unlike what mine came out as? Does anyone have an ALPS which they are willing to lend me? (Just thought I'd toss that last on in there! )

Thanks!

[indy1977tx]

ALPs will do white but you have to have the white ribbon (ink). Your friend might just have black, cyan, yellow, magenta, and finish ribbons. But ALPs do white, metallic silver, and metallic gold - pretty awesome little "home" printers.

If your friend chooses not to print color over white (I am not aware if this is a true limitation) then he should print her silouhette in white and then you put down the white and then cover then white decal with the color decal.

Jordan

[Hiroboy]

IMO, the only way to print on an Alps Correctly for Decal use is to print each colour on a seperate pass thou the printer, very time consuming and require the graphic to be a vector graphic with each colour on a seperate layer, they you will get awesome results. If you just just hit print with a Jpeg you will get what you have.

[Inquisitor]

The ALPS printers have some limitations but you can learn a few tricks to end up with good results. First you must have the white ink ribbons to print white and pretty much a must. Also the best results comes from using vector based design programs and colors on separate layers. I don't have an ALPS printer and been wishing to buy one for a while, so I've read everything about them.

As I can see from the photo, he didn't print a white background for the girl and it ended up transparent against the blue on the surface you applied on.

Taking your design as an example, make a solid black silhuette of the girl & shock absorber on a separate layer, on the exact same position as the original design. Now set up so that only the black silhuette is visible and printable, invis/unselect anything else. Go to printing options and check and select spot color and some other option, can't remember name, that makes the printer hold onto the paper and won't eject it till you tell it to. Install a white ribbon instead of the black one and print. It'll print a white silhuette on your paper and it won't eject the paper. Now make your original design visible/printable, uncheck spot color and hold the paper from the printing options and print. The alps printer should roll back the paper and print the color design over the white silhuette without any misalignment.

Now something more advanced, the printer resolutions which are limited to 300 or 600 dpis depending on you model, if you use some color palettes it'll ditter them just like old inkjet printers. Not something we want for our decals. But there's a trick to overcome that, it's very complex and also it still has a limit to the colors available, but as long as you understand how colors are mixed or download a chart you should be ok. Simply put the Alps prints with a combination of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow just like any other printer, using series of dots with this 3 colors to trick the human eye into seeing another color, that's what happens when you feed it the whole picture at once.

The trick to get solid color fills instead of dittered ones is using spot colors and separate layers and assemble your whole art mixing layers of cyan, magenta and yellow pieces.

Let's take an example, Green is a combination from Cyan and Yellow and Red a combo from Magenta and Yellow for the printer.

So a piece of art which had a green box and a red circle, you would need a layer with only the box for spot cyan, a layer with a circle for spot magenta and finally a layer with both box and circle for yellow. Then print each layer separately with the corresponding spot color without the printer ejecting the paper. In this example the cyan box layer mixes with the yellow one to get a solid green one. The magenta circle layer mixes with the yellow one and you get a solid red circle

It's sound harder than it is, once you start making a design from scratch and having in mind how colors mix, you'll get the hang of it. There are many alps sites with some handy color charts for this.

Hiroboy beat me to it while I was typing. His is the short version, mine is the indepth one. Hope this info comes in handy for you willimo