John Phillips mentioned some of the problems with reproducing roll
labels.  I have a few comments.

Where there is an unchanging "underlay" pattern on a roll label, I have
used two techniques to reproduce the label.

The first is to make two printing passes, where the fixed pattern is
printed first, then the variable pattern is printed later.  If
alignment can be held in the printer, this works well.  This is the
technique used by the original manufacturer.

The second is to use a program such as Adobe Photoshop or Pagemaker,
which can isolate the fixed pattern to its own layer.  After creating
the variable pattern on another layer, the combined image is output to
a printer, or to a program such as Pagemaker for printing.  I usually
put the fixed pattern into an array in Pagemaker, then add the label
text to the array.

John alludes to the task of recreating labels on a computer.  This is a
large, tedious job, for one essentially has to edit each pixel to do it
right.  Fortunately there are patterns that repeat and some uniform
color areas, but each label I have done has taken in the order of 40
hours of work to get it "right".  I find that 600 dpi resolution is a
minimum for good results.

It is also difficult to get the colors to print close to the original.
Figuring out what the original colors were is a challenge in itself,
what with changes in paper and ink colors over the years.  Then comes
translating one's interpretation of the original to print.  First is
the display calibration, then the program calibration, next the printer
calibration, and lastly the color and surface characteristics of the
paper.

Even if one were to go the full route of color separations and using a
professional printer, he would find that the original inks are not
available, so the colors would not be exact.  (To say nothing of the
variability of the originals!)

Perhaps we MMDers could make label files available for general use.

Bob Billings