Make Your Own Decals

[ruzlkampf]

Whew! Experiencing some technical difficulties there for a bit. Getting ahead of myself in my euphoria. Let me show ya'll a scan I remarked with the codes I'm trying to achieve, and their sizes and placement. Black codes in a simple font. We should be able to do this.

 

 

 

[ruzlkampf]

After clicking on 'text', left-click on your blank page to draw a box. Depending on how big of a box you outline.....will place your letters. You'll just have to practice doing this to get things to your preference. You can also change the colors by clicking on a color on the palette at the bottom of the page. After typing out (no, you can't change the font. Thats for those Photoshop guys) the letters I need, using capital letters to get them closer to what I want, click anywhere outside that box to get rid of the box and 'place' the letters on the page.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then, you have this;

 

 

 

 

[ruzlkampf]

Don't freak that these letters don't look like what you want. We're only using them as templates. We're going to be doing this 'cave-man style', and will be redrawing all this anyway. Now we want to be able to move things around to where we want.

Oh yeah, before I forget! WARNING, once I have shown you a button and what it is.....I won't keep going back to it over and over. I want to finish this lesson sometime before the next ice-age.

 

Moving on; We want to move these around so we can play around and edit them to succumb to our will. Go to the select button. (you'll become VERY familiar with this button, and it will be ingrained into your psyche before this is over.)

 

 

 

 

 

Left-click and draw a box around whatever you want moved. Holding down the left mouse button.......slide it where you want. 'M's are sociable creatures and easy to play with so we'll start with that.

 

 

 

[ruzlkampf]

Let's have some FUN now!!!! Here is our first obstacle; How big do we make these? Being cavemen(cavepeople?), we're going to use a stick with marks all over it. Some people use the term 'ruler', but we're dummys and don't hang with that crowd, right?! They're not cool like us, and we'll just shun those 'know-it-alls. Whadda they know? Usually I have all kinds of printed plans, scans and other assorted whatnots that I'm sliding all over the living room floor when I do this, and reveling in how big of a mess I can make. Tonight, we'll just stick out our tongue the side of our mouth, squint and put our stick up there and guesstimate in true 'dummy-style'. I prefer the term 'custom sized'. heh heh.

 

 

 

 

 

Hmmmm, my flinty-eyed hunters gaze has ciphered the size at 3 medium sized marks on my stick. Some people call this 3/4's of an inch. Whatever. Now if the 'm' is still surrounded by your box and selected give it a right click and get this menu. Try to get that box as close to your object as possible....we don't want to re-size 1/2 the page. Lotsa dummy-fun,...but counter-productive.

 

 

 

 

[ruzlkampf]

This box will magically appear and startle most of you,.....but don't freak, it's friendly. This is where we're going to make this bigger using percentages.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can see the furtive looks and beads of perspiration breaking out in terror of the unknown here. Hum a polka, or say the alphabet backwards(uh oh, we can't do that,...we're dummys) and prepare for a 'light-bulb going on' moment , and an uncontrollable urge to giggle. Just for kicks, lets go up to %300. I do this a lot, and can eyeball things,....and you will be able to also when this is over. It's like riding a bike or catching a fish. Real easy to do, but a PITA listening to me yak and describe it. Type %300 in those boxes, OR if you want to really skew your image... type in a different percentage for width/height and you'll get an image to match.

 

 

 

[ruzlkampf]

OH!, So we've got an over-achiever in class? You will stay after class and write "I will not put Derek's pigtails in the pencil sharpener" 200 bazillion times with the stump of a piece of chalk,....AND I'm going to call your mother young man! NO, I don't CARE if your father is in the mafia! Whuf, where wuz I? Aaaaaah yes, getting to the part where I show you how to SIZE those serial numbers to actually fit on that Mustangs tail.

After hitting 'OK', this is what you've got. Click anywhere outside that 'select' box to 'place' the image. Whups, I wrote right click, but it should be left. What can I say....I'm a dummy. You now have a big 'm'.

 

 

 

 

 

Now we want to zoom in and admire our handiwork. Go to that 'magnifying glass' to ....amazingly enough....change the zoom. Adjust the level of magnification to suit your Optivisor or coke-bottle thick glasses and gaze in wild wonder. Yeah I know it looks like a pixillated piece of horse-hockey, but that's because your a dummy and don't know what's possible to do with this yet. Stay calm, stay calm.

 

 

 

 

[ruzlkampf]

Isn't it beautiful?! Well, OK even I'm not that dumb. Doesn't matter, this is only a template....and we haven't started drawing yet for you to realize what the 'resolution' of this drawing is yet or how big a pixel is.

 

 

 

 

 

Now how big is this 'M'? Let's go over to the 'line' button and draw(hey lookit you, drawing something already!) a line across the top and bottom of this 'M'. You can also change the color of the line using the color 'palette' below if ya want to get fancy. Left-click on your piece of paper and hold down the button on the mouse to draw a line. Letting off the mouse button ends the line. Yes, you can go diagonally. WHAAAAAAAH, OK this is where I'm going to do my first screw-up to show ya'll how to 'undo' something now that you're scribbling all over the page. I made my line too thick....and accidentally covered up part of my 'M'. There is an 'erasure' button on that menu you could use to fix this, but I wanted to show where the 'undo' button is located. Hitting this will undo whatever the last thing you did was. I think you can go back a couple of undos if you wish, but I'll let ya'll practice that for homework.

 

 

[ruzlkampf]

Here's where it is after you've calmed down from freaking out.

 

 

 

 

 

A look at the menu to see where all the buttons are. Drawing lines isn't mandatory, I'm just going thru the tool bars to give a runabout on what's available.

 

 

 

[ruzlkampf]

Let's go back to 'normal size to see what duh heck we just did. Use the magnifying glass to back to 1X and this is what we see. We're going to change gears here and have some fun. We want to know about this sizing stuff to see what the heck the sizes of all these numbers and letters are. The Photoshop guys have tools that throw a graph of measurements across this image to see at a glance how big everything is. But they're stuck up and won't let us use their computer or do any of this for us. We're dummys and are going to be doing this in a 'beyond crude' fashion that is effective....and cheap.

 

 

 

[ruzlkampf]

Let's change the format a bit and get away from that sterile computer screen that isn't dummy friendly. Remember sizing that 'canvas' to the paper you were going to use? Well, here's where you find out that wasn't dumb at all,.....and you were actually being far-sighted and astute! See, you're getting better already! Take a piece of paper that is the size you set the canvas up for,...and hold it up to your monitor. Yeah, kinda makes you gasp for breath and rolls the eyes back in your head a bit, eh?! It's the SAME size. Whoohoo! See how smart you are?

 

 

 

[ruzlkampf]

Now take a pencil or a rock and hold the paper up to the image you sized earlier. Make some scratches on those lines(that's all they're there for, to make it easier to see) and take that piece of paper over somewhere you can lay it out.

 

 

 

[ruzlkampf]

Take your measuring stick and see what ya got. Remember i was looking for 3/4s of an inch. Hey!, Lookit that..... Guess what? When you print this out, those images will be exactly the same size as what's on your monitor. This has potential, huh?

 

 

 

 

[Derek B]

So far so good Russ...Even I can keep up with this at the moment (where is the dunce icon when you need one?)

 

Derek

[ruzlkampf]

OK, I'm a dummy, but I don't like having to keep holding a piece of paper up to my monitor like a fool over and over. I'm not only dumb, I'm lazy. heh heh. That 'select' tool is going to be my friend now, and I'm going to make it work FOR me, and not be intimidated by it. It WILL obey! Now, I know for a fact that my 'M' is 3/4s of an inch tall, so I'm going to select a portion of those lines and move them off to the side,....flip it,....and use it for a measuring stick to guesstimate how WIDE my 'M' is now. Come on,...go ahead and try it. It feels good. Here we go by selecting(you remember where that button is, right?) a portion of the line.

 

 

 

 

 

Now remember how we moved that little 'M' around earlier? Lets move that selection over to the side and make it do some tricks.

 

 

 

[ruzlkampf]

Now while this is still 'selected' and has that box around it.....give it a little tickle with a right click. Whoa ho! Look what we can make this do! We want to rotate it, so we'll scroll down to that and select it. Notice all the other options you can make things do with the selection button and a right click. Opens up all kinds of possibilities. Just takes a bit of practice and experimenting to see what's possible. This program is a tool, and it's only as good as the person using it. USE your imagination!

 

 

 

 

 

Back to getting our image to roll over. More options here. You can even make miror images of something, which is handy if you want to make say a flag or squadron insignia for both sides of a fuse and want them facing forward. 90 degrees should do the trick here.