High Resolution Decal Scans

[Wm Reid]

Hi, I’m just wondering is there is a good resource for high resolution decal scans of older Estes kits? Specifically, I’m looking for the decals for kit #1983 Arrow.

Just thought I’d ask

thanks

 

[jhein]

Hi, I’m just wondering is there is a good resource for high resolution decal scans of older Estes kits? Specifically, I’m looking for the decals for kit #1983 Arrow.

Just thought I’d ask

thanks

Try: https://plans.rocketshoppe.com/estes/est1983/est1983.htm

Hopefully it is high enough. With a little photoshop magic you should be able to get what you want.

Good Luck!
Jim

 

[Ray Lecture]

I just launched my Estes Arrow this weekend after lots of years sitting in a box. It's a very nice rocket and fly well even in the high winds we had this weekend. Bought the kit in 1989 or 1990

 

[kuririn]

I have cleaned up several "dirty" scans on the JimZ site. I'm thinking of starting a project involving all TRF members whereby cleaned up scans would be submitted into a repository.
Anyway here's a cleaned up facsimile:

 

[new2hpr]

In addition to 'cleaned up' scans at 1:1 scale, it would be great if anyone has the ability to convert to vector art, so easily scaled.
-Ken

 

[caveduck]

I've got several 1200dpi highly cleaned up scans, but unfortunately the Arrow isn't one of them.

 

[manixFan]

Other than obvious copyright issues, there are many with scanned decals. The Arrow version above is very low resolution, at least from a pixel count. If you crop the main part of the logo, it isn't even 500 pixels wide. I do pixel to pixel to vector conversion in Illustrator all the time and especially for fine detail, like the bow, you really need a lot more pixels. Parts of the bow are only 1 or 2 pixels wide. Hard to get very good results with such a low resolution. A cursory test of that logo, even after preprocessing in Photoshop, yielded poor results.

Scans at 1200 psi are obviously better, but unfortunately many scanners are really just 300 or 600 ppi, and use interpolation to get higher pixel counts. That can cause another set of issues.

And very few decal scans have any kind of physical reference for scale or color, which further hinders accuracy. Even when I have scanned my own decal sets, converting them to vector art can be a very tedious process, even with software like Illustrator which has very good pixel to vector conversion abilities.


Tony

I tried to convert the NASA Pegasus model decals to vector (37518) and the Pegasus was really a bear based on how small it is on the original decal sheet. I basically had to redraw it from scratch.