Art Central offers custom overglaze decal services to help you personalize your ceramic pieces. Whether you prefer full-color or black and white decals, we can print your design files for transfer onto ceramic or porcelain surfaces.
How Ceramic Decal Printing Works:
(Below is a step-by-step breakdown of the process for printing an image using a ceramic decal printer and applying it to glazed ceramic or porcelain to create beautifully decorated pieces.)
1. Open the photo or image in Adobe Photoshop and make the necessary edits to prepare it for printing.
2. Send us your digital file at info@artcentral.ae
3. We will print the file on A3 ceramic decal paper using ceramic decal printer.
4. We will apply a ceramic cover coat on the printed sheet and send it to the client
5. Client to trim the finished decal as required.
6. Dip the decal in water. Wait for a few seconds, maybe 30 or 50 seconds
7. Apply the decal on the glazed ceramic piece in the same way you apply any decal.
8. Fire the ceramic piece in a kiln. This is the step that makes the decoration permanent.
9. The product is finished!
Our ceramic printers will deliver the best possible quality for your needs.
OUR DECAL PRINTING SYSTEM
- A4 & A3
- CMYK 4 color process, (particularly suited for natural skin tones and photographic images)
- Fluxed Magenta Tuning Color Set (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. No metallic colors or white can be printed with this system. Soon we will be printing the metallic colors ,Gold and silver)
- Using unfluxed lamination paper or unfluxed liquid cover coat (lacquer only)
- Firing temperature of 880 °C to 900 °C
- Firing of decals printed by Art Central (Ramp Mode)
1st Segment: 0°- 420°C - 4 hours; NO HOLD
2nd Segment: 420°- 890°C - 4 hours
890°C - hold 15 min then stop the kiln
DIGITAL IMAGE REQUIREMENT FOR DECAL PRINTING:
Here's how to send off your digital image to be printed for decal ceramic printing-
- Set up your file to print using a design program like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator or Acrobat. We recommend saving your file as .PDF, .PSD or .TIFF formats.
- The printable area on a sheet of decals is 10.25"x15.75" (26 cm x 40 cm). Fill this area with your designs to maximize the space. If you need a digital decal larger than this size, contact us about our custom large size printing services.
- 300 dpi resolution will yield the best results. Lower resolution or blurry images will yield a poor
decal quality. - Black & white images should be in grayscale.
- Color images should be in "CMYK SWOP coated" profile. This CMYK profile will give you the best rendering on your screen of the color limitation of the ceramic and digital decals.
- Send your file to info@artcentral.ae . If your file is larger than 20MB, you may need to use a free file sending service like Dropbox or Google Drive.
- Average turnaround from order and file submission to pick up is 3-5 days
We're here to assist you! If your image doesn’t meet the guidelines, no worries. For any technical questions, feel free to reach out to our technical person Kenneth at +971 2 886 4728. We also offer affordable design services if needed.