What is the most accurate way of taking a photo, and getting it sized on screen correctly in CD6 for designing decals?

RTRSLOTS said:

I am trying to design decals for a model car, but can`t seem to get the picture adjusted to the correct size on screen CD6, so the decals print in correct scale size HELP !! thank you 

You might consider using a macro such as Shelby's AutoSize. I have never used it myself, but I have a macro of my own that can scale objects based on user-defined reference points. If you do this a lot, then it might be worth buying or writing such a macro.

As a manual approach, you might do something like this:

1. Draw a line on top of your car photo, located based on some good reference points that you can measure on the real model - for example, center-of-wheel to center-of-wheel, or bumper-to-bumper. A longer distance will reduce the impact of measuring error.
2. Check the length of that line.
3. Scale the photo and the line proportionately by the same percentage, choosing that percentage to make the line the "real-world" length it should be.

I suggest that you use the same techniques used for vehicle wraps.  Measure the width and height of the entire model and the specific area for the decal,. (door) what ever. 

Take the best centered perspective photo of the model you can, using the view where the decal is to be placed and import that into CorelDRAW and center the image into a rectangle you create in Draw the size of the measurements that you took of the model.

You may want to create a rectangle of the specific area where the decal will go to double check sizing and make corrections, remember the rectangle will be correct the image is just a visual scale guide.

Newer versions of Draw allow for perspective correction.  Then just create you decal and place in on the imported image as a check. You now are ready to go into the vehicle wrap graphic creation business.  On real vehicles it's a bit more detailed accounting for concaves and curves.

This image is a poor choice, the angled perspective creates issues, straight on shots are what you need.