Padgate Works - The Finishing Shop

[iak]

Morning all, progress at last!!!
Here in this thread, the finished stock should appear for your perusal - eventually!!!

For your entertainment this morning:







The above medfits have been so long in the making and finishing its frankly embarrassing in some ways. Anyhow the finish line beckons so the correct lettering has begun



This Shocvan is a BR Diagram 1/209 on an LNER type fitted chassis, an oddball in other words...
The lettering on this van is in the latter BR standard style, using the shown box arrangement. The medfits have the usual engineers stock mish-mash.

All of the decals I have drawn myself in Adobe Illustrator and then had printed on an ALPS printer. I still cannot decide which software I should stay with for this task. CorelDraw I have used for years, whilst Illustrator may be useful learning professionally so, why not take advantage there of ....

More to come as I fight the good fight with decals and other naughtiness.....................

[Andy W]

Nice work Iain. What transfer paper and ALPS printer do you use and where didi you get them?

Andy

[jim s-w]

Good stuff

Shouldnt the OHLE flashes be the earlier type though? (just wondering)

Jim

[iak]

Nice work Iain. What transfer paper and ALPS printer do you use and where didi you get them?

Andy

Hallo Andy
I will advise once I get the info from our groups tech-head - he deals with these things
The actual decals were drawn using Adobe Illustrator CS5. Effective but akin to trying to kill an ant with a howitzer really
I am trailing a piece of open source software called Inkscape. It may be a viable alternative, costs naer a thing and does not need a Ferrari standard PC to run it - stay tuned....

Iain

[jayell]

I am trailing a piece of open source software called Inkscape. It may be a viable alternative, costs naer a thing and does not need a Ferrari standard PC to run it - stay tuned....
Iain

trailing or trialling

I just installed the debian linux version just to see what it looks like, it comes with an html version of the book "A guide to Inkscape" which will cost quite a lot if you buy the dead tree version. There is also a website http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/ which has some extra material.

Inkscape is also available for Windows and Mac operating systems here http://inkscape.org/download/

I haven't used it as have not had any need for a vector drawing program, and have no idea how it compares to commercial apps but as you say is is free

John

[Andy W]

Iain,

I'm o.k. with Illustrator - it's getting white transfers onto decal paper that I'm struggling with. Any pointers would be welcome. Cheers.

Andy

[jim s-w]

Illustrator can be/is massivly powerful but for producing things like transfers we are really talking about the extreme basics of what it can do. If you have it use it, no sense learning something else for something so simple.

Cheers

Jim

[nigelcliffe]

Inkscape will be fine for producing lettering/transfers. As will any number of other software packages.

Inkscape does not have everything that Illustrator contains, but I'd suggest that anyone using Illustrator "properly" is a full time graphic designer or closely allied professional.


- Nigel

[iak]

I am trailing a piece of open source software called Inkscape. It may be a viable alternative, costs naer a thing and does not need a Ferrari standard PC to run it - stay tuned....
Iain

trailing or trialling

I just installed the debian linux version just to see what it looks like, it comes with an html version of the book "A guide to Inkscape" which will cost quite a lot if you buy the dead tree version. There is also a website http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/ which has some extra material.

Inkscape is also available for Windows and Mac operating systems here http://inkscape.org/download/

I haven't used it as have not had any need for a vector drawing program, and have no idea how it compares to commercial apps but as you say is is free

John

Ooooooooooopppss, sausage fingers strikes again
It is a very user friendly bit of software John, interesting to see one is dabbling in the Linux world...

[iak]

Illustrator can be/is massivly powerful but for producing things like transfers we are really talking about the extreme basics of what it can do. If you have it use it, no sense learning something else for something so simple.

Cheers

Jim

Yes Jim but it costs £330 plus where as Inkscape costs zilch...
I am having to learn to use it for professional purposes so I have access to it for nothing, as well as Corel Draw which I have used for many years.
Some reading this thread may want to try some home grown transfers so I thought it best to show the two sides of the coin - commercial bruisers and open-source practicality

[iak]

Inkscape will be fine for producing lettering/transfers. As will any number of other software packages.

Inkscape does not have everything that Illustrator contains, but I'd suggest that anyone using Illustrator "properly" is a full time graphic designer or closely allied professional.


- Nigel

Or a poor Lab Techie being beaten over the head by his employers "new skills" manifesto....
Wibble...

[jayell]

It is a very user friendly bit of software John, interesting to see one is dabbling in the Linux world...

I think I'm a bit beyond dabbling since I have been using one version or another since 1994 or thereabouts. I have been using Debian since 2003 partly as a result of joining Hants Linux User Group and have stayed with Debian ever since. I resigned from HantsLUG only this year as we now live too far away for me to attend meetings easily (since I don't like driving much these days)

I use the 'unstable' version on my main system and an elderly laptop and find it perfectly stable enough for my needs, my backup desktop system and my EeePC are running Debian Stable (wheezy), and the VPS which hosts my website is running old-stable but will get updated to wheezy sometime soon.

Before Linux I was using OS/2 at work until I retired and took a copy home with me so didn't need to use a MS OS. I do have a Win 7 system that I got for my wife as an upgrade from XP, but she didn't really get on with it and decided she wants to carry on using XP until there is no choice but to upgrade. She dislikes changes The Win 7 system has Templot installed but I have said enough about my trials and tribulations using that in the past.

John

[iak]

Ahhhh-haaaa.
I shall rephrase, "practicing in and venturing forth in Linux..."

Sláinte
IAK

[Guy Rixon]

I am trailing a piece of open source software called Inkscape. It may be a viable alternative, costs naer a thing and does not need a Ferrari standard PC to run it - stay tuned....

What output format do you use to get the graphics into the printer? Is it produced directly by Inkscape or do you output SVG from Inkscape and convert it with something else?

Inkscape seems to be a fine piece of software from my limited experience, but I often find with FOSS software that the conversion from open formats to useful ones is problematic.

[jim s-w]

Inkscape will be fine for producing lettering/transfers. As will any number of other software packages.

Inkscape does not have everything that Illustrator contains, but I'd suggest that anyone using Illustrator "properly" is a full time graphic designer or closely allied professional.

- Nigel

or an ex full time designer in my case. For a while Adobe were giving older versions away via their website (photoshop too). I did say 'if you have it' and at the end of the day for most applications we are only talking about typing, choosing a font and perhaps popping a box around it (you can play with the kerning if you want to) so you can pretty much use whatever you have.

Cheers

Jim

[Andy W]

I didn't make myself clear. I'm happy to use Illustrator to produce the artwork - it's what paper and printer to use that I'm not sure of.

[jayell]

What output format do you use to get the graphics into the printer? Is it produced directly by Inkscape or do you output SVG from Inkscape and convert it with something else?

Inkscape seems to be a fine piece of software from my limited experience, but I often find with FOSS software that the conversion from open formats to useful ones is problematic.

It prints directly to my Kyocera b&w laser printer, no need for any conversion, the following is taken from the manual:-

"The SVG standard is directed toward a complete description of two-dimensional graphics, including animation in an XML (eXtensible Markup Language) format. XML is an open standard for describing a document in a way that can be easily extended and is resistant to future changes in the document specification. A drawing saved in one version of SVG by one version of a drawing program should be viewable, to the full extent possible, by any previous or future version of any drawing program that adheres to the SVG standard. If a program doesn't support something in the SVG standard, it should just skip over any part of a drawing that uses it, rendering the rest correctly.

SVG files are small, and drawings described by the standard adapt well to different presentation methods. This has led to great interest in the standard. Support is included in many web browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, and Internet Explorer from version 9), or is available through plug-ins (e.g., Adobe, Ssrc SVG, svgweb and Google). Over a dozen companies including Apple (iPhone), Blackberry, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson produce mobile phones that utilize a subset of the full SVG standard (SVG Tiny) that has been tailored for devices with limited resources."

John

[Guy Rixon]

John,

thanks for the information; and I'm glad that it's printing properly on your printer.

I was aware of the background of SVG - I've written software to generate SVG in the past - and I have to say that the promised interoperability never quite showed up. Viewers wouldn't read all valid SVG (that's schema-valid, checked in an XML tool), only the bits they liked. Various bits of valid SVG wouldn't print out as expected. Getting things to print at an exact size only worked sometimes; some converters seemed to mess up the size information. That was two years ago; hopefully things are better now.

So the question stands: how does one prepare the artwork from Inkscape to print on somebody else's ALPS printer, given that a printing firm probably won't be running Inkscape to manage the print job? I'd expect either a conversion to EPS (probably done by Inkscape itself, it used to have EPS support) or to PDF (don't know about the support here). Possibly also a CMYK separation which used to be a notable feature missing from Inkscape.

And I did try to RTFM, but they don't seem to have written the chapters on printing and export yet...

[Martin Wynne]

The Win 7 system has Templot installed but I have said enough about my trials and tribulations using that in the past.

Hi John,

Templot runs quite well on Linux under Wine.

Furthermore, it includes the Sketchboard feature which can easily be used to produce designs for labels and decals. Full support for formatted text, curved text, boxes, outlines, bitmaps, freehand colour, transparency effects and a colour picker from anywhere on the screen. Native output to PDF files or direct to the printer, or export to hi-res image file. All free and part of Templot:







Martin.

[iak]

What happened here?
I'm a bit confused as to how all this software speak got into my thread about making transfers and finishing my stock...

Wibble

[jayell]

So the question stands: how does one prepare the artwork from Inkscape to print on somebody else's ALPS printer, given that a printing firm probably won't be running Inkscape to manage the print job? I'd expect either a conversion to EPS (probably done by Inkscape itself, it used to have EPS support) or to PDF (don't know about the support here). Possibly also a CMYK separation which used to be a notable feature missing from Inkscape.

And I did try to RTFM, but they don't seem to have written the chapters on printing and export yet...

The "Save as" menu item allows saving to a dozen or so formats including ai, dxf, eps, hpgl, pdf, plt, png, pov and ps, plus a few more

Does one of those formats give what you want?

John

PS sorry for hi-jacking your wagons thread Iain

[iak]

It's actually quite fascinating John


I tend, by the way, to save/export files in AI and EPS. We make sure all of the font sets are on the PC running the ALPS as well.

I'm off tae bed now - teched out. ...

[jayell]

Ahhhh-haaaa.
I shall rephrase, "practicing in and venturing forth in Linux..."

I should perhaps have mentioned that I have no knowledge of programming other than very simple scripts so I don't use Linux as a techie but just as a very satisfied user. I just prefer the way it works to anything else I have tried. I do use the command line for lots of things rather than the gui tools.

I completely forgot to mention I also have a Mac Mini running Snow Leopard, it is now too 'old' to run anything newer but it lives in the loft workshop where its primary use will as a 'pdf reader' for all those P4 manuals etc. I am not all that keen on the Apple GUI , but the underlying OS is unix based so lots of command line tools are familiar, so that helps

I get involved with my wife's XP system as little as possible as I know I'll start swearing at it before long and my very limited exposure to Win 7 doesn't fill me with any hopes it will be better.

John

[Guy Rixon]

I tend, by the way, to save/export files in AI and EPS. We make sure all of the font sets are on the PC running the ALPS as well.

Thanks. So the EPS file is the one that goes to the printer?

[iak]

Well it goes to the PC which the printer is attached to
Ah the joys of modern technology.....