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Old 02-24-11 | 06:52 AM
  #48  
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Sheldon Brown Memorial - Donating
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From: Rocket City, No'ala

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Originally Posted by iab
Nice in theory, but not really based in reality.

As others have stated, pixal artwork is worthless. It needs to be converted to vector artwork. Adobe Illustator is the industry standard. It costs about $600.

Then there is the time. To convert a logo from pixal to vector will take 2-6 hours for someone with a lot of experience with the program. This comes from first-hand experience as I recreated Cinelli, Frejus and Gloria logos. I have over 20 years experience using Illustrator. What's shop rate at your LBS? $50-$60 /hour? Granted a decal maker can reuse the artwork, but there is no guarantee you won't be his only customer.

Next is color. Color is an SOB. Is the color in the photograph correct? Is the monitor showing the correct color in the photograph? PMS (Pantone matching system) is the industry standard. Does Pantone have an exact match? Then comes the hard part. Even with a specified PMS color, every printer will print them different. Even 2 different printers that are the same model are likely to print different colors. Then there are usually a few colors a printer won't print well. The chroma is off in the red for example. Then there are metallics. You have to print out multiple times to get the color correct. And now you need a printer to do this all. That isn't a cheap printer. The inks aren't cheap.

So $50 to get 1 page of decals is pretty much an excellent deal. And I am fairly certain anyone charging you $50 is not getting rich.

We charged $50 to get something "camera ready" before making a nylon plate and so many customers complained; they had no idea the amount of work that went to make a picture look right. And this was before Illustrator; we used to blow the image way up, get out the ink pens, then scale it back down. $50 was often a losing proposition for us.
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