Photo Suggestions

[Steve Clarkson]

OK....still practicing...........

I took Tim's advice and decided to try a different picture.....so I'm attaching one of a dog.

Lets assume that someone gave you this picture and asked you to make a pet memorial on a 12x12 absolute black granite tile from HD. What are the steps you would take to make it?

I assume you would import it into a new Corel document, then hit edit bitmap to process the photo in PhotoPaint or Photoshop.

First, would you adjust the tone/contrast or mask/cut out the picture? Does it matter what the order is? ie...by using the cut out lab or masking or cropping, do you lose image information that would be helpful when you are adjusting tone, brightness, etc.?

Next, would you crop this picture, use an oval mask (or some other shape), or use the cutout lab? Why?

Since the dog's ears in this example are black....how would you make sure that after it is engraved, there is some contrast between the edge of the ears and the rest of the black granite? In the cut out lab would you trace the exact outline of the dog or leave an inch or so of the background to provide that contrast? Would you use the whole dog's body or just use his head?

Assuming you used the cutout lab, would you put a white background so that when you invert it, the background will be black and engrave white on the granite? Do you invert it in PhotoPaint/Photoshop or wait until you bring it back into Corel and then invert it? Does it matter?

When you adjust a picture.....do you adjust anything other than the tone, brightness and contrast? Yes, I understand every picture is different, but I'm looking for what people do.....in general.

Do you use the histogram? If so, what are you looking for when you make adjustments to it? Do you use the tone curve? If so, is there a specific shape you go for (I think it was Margaret that said she goes to the middle of the curve and pulls down slightly). When you adjust the contrast/brightness/intensity are there specific values that you input?

Once your picture is done (in Photopaint or Photoshop) and you bring it back into Corel......do you create an oval (or some other shape) and powerclip the image in? Or so you just place the image where you want it?

Just trying to learn here folks......so any input you can give as to your typical steps in photo processing would be greatly appreciated.

[Stephen Beckham]

Steve,

My first question would be what is the customer looking for - beyond that and given the free artist freedom...

I'm not so sure I'd cut out the grass. For this particular one, I'd blur the grass around him to give a surreal look around him, but leaving him in focus. Then I would use the Creative Vignette to give an oval around his upper torso but fade the outsides to black so it will give a fade-in effect once it's converted.

I'll play with it in a few and post something that I would do with it....

___

Okay - that was a quick edit - would probably need more cleaning before doing anything with it... I use mainly the Brightness/Contrast to change my photos. I do it in their original format, then I change to greyscale and do it again. The only other tools I may use is spot fading/brightening or the Gamma settings. The only time I go to the Histogram is when I feel like confusing myself and making something look really awful.... I've only had luck with the Histogram once or twice...

My main goals were to center the focus of the picture and brighten the whites and darken the darks. I didn't want dark next to the ears and that was the reason for the fade versus erase around the dog specifically.

Sorry if this wasn't what you were asking. One other note - I use an oval mostly, but if I were going to put it on a 12X12 like you asked, I'd very likely use the square or rectangluar Vignette instead.

Steve

[John W. Love]

Steve,

I'm not sure if the way I would do this is correct or not...but I'll answer and if I'm wrong hopefully someone will correct me and we will both learn something new!

I think since the dog has such dark ears I would leave the grass in the photo... however, if I decided to remove the grass I would use the cut out lab in photopaint. In that case my first step would be to do that, then I would set the dog on a white background so that his ears would show in the engraving. Photos that I've chosen to do that way I've applied a vignette to and they turn out pretty good. Once I've cut him out I would then adjust the contrast and brightness. After that I would save the file and open it in photograv for processing. Then import that to Coreldraw. I think there might be an easier way to do all this, but I'm still learning...why does the learning curve have to be so danged steep??? We even paid for training when we got our machine and we did learn a lot but Sign Warehouse doesn't support Coreldraw or Photograv so we didn't get any help with those programs or how to edit photos to best engrave them. Hopefully soon we will have sufficient funds to invest in that training program I've seen the info posted on here about for Coreldraw!

[Margaret Turco]

Ok, I'm trying to learn this too. I cropped the head, resampled to 300 dpi 11.875" square. Used the freehand mask in photopaint to draw around it and saved. In draw, adjusted brightness/contrast/intensity to 35/49/-35. Looked ok to me. Then adjusted tone/curve by clicking on the 5th grid from the bottom and dragging down about 1.5 grids to make the middle darks darker. Power clipped into a 12" square and converted to bitmap, applied circle vignette. I'm having trouble reducing the cdr file size and had to save bitmaps really compressed to attach.

[Martin Boekers]

Steve,
I use Photoshop so I'm not sure if Photopaint has all the similar features, but I'll run through what I may try.

First I would open it in Photoshop this would save time and not cause another "generation" in your editing process.

Photoshop CS has quite a few more tools than the previous versions to make editing easier.

If your going to use Photograv make sure you have the image sized and the resolution you want.

Edit the image is the next step, if you want to do testing on the image without losing its information instead of adjusting in "real time" which is destructive to file information, you can create an adjustment layer. By doing this it allows for tweeking from the original file with out "destroying file info. You can make different layers for contrast, saturation, curves etc. After you are happy with the image save it as a "full" layered file. for reference.
Next flatten the layers and save as a bitmap for Photograv.

There are so many things you can do with an editing program it would be hard to go over it all here.

A Google search for Photoshop or Photopaint tutorials will bring up literally hundreds of free sites that can run you through things.

Another item is called an action (photoshop) I have quite a few of these that I have downloaded, mostly for artistic things like makeing a watercolor ar sketch image. These are easy to download and use, basically you open an image then select the action you want to use and run it! The action systematically goes through all the changes that you want the image to do instead of doing it manually each time.


http://www.atncentral.com/

This is a good site to start with.

Histograms, can be a quick reference to see the distribution of the tonal range. You don't want heavy "spikes" on either end as that will lose details. Typically it should look like a nice mountain range.
What I would suggest is that you find images you think really look good and ones that don't and see how the histograms compare, that can be a benchmark for you to use.

Hope this helps a bit,

Marty

[Scott Shepherd]

I think I over tweaked it....

[mark reynolds]

Hi Steve,

Do a search on (how to prepare a photo) and find the thread where Augusta Persira ASked how to prepare aphoto and Frank Corker responded to answer his question in using using adobe photo shop. Thread date was 06-09-2008.

Mark Reynolds

[Dave Johnson29]

Another item is called an action (photoshop) I have quite a few of these that I have downloaded, mostly for artistic things


Hi Marty,

Do you or any others know of similar Action-type things for Corel? I am getting pretty envious of the PhotoShop offerings. For some things it seems leaps ahead of Corel.

I have tried the Gold Method with Corel but never with any great success.

[Dee Gallo]

Okay, I tried playing with it and printed out on matboard (my new favorite) using several settings, plus the last one on the bottom right is the same image put through Photograv on the granite setting.

I think either the 15 or 20 power setting is the best. I don't have an extra piece of granite right now, maybe I'll find some at HD this weekend. But they were out last time I was there.....

I think Frank's suggestion to burn an unprocessed picture is a good one, though in this particular case.

cheers, dee

ps- Steve/Scott - you are too funny!

[Steve Clarkson]

I use mainly the Brightness/Contrast to change my photos. I do it in their original format, then I change to greyscale and do it again. The only other tools I may use is spot fading/brightening or the Gamma settings.

Now THAT's interesting that ypu do it twice.

Thanks for sharing.

[Margaret Turco]

Dee, Did you remove the grass in the background, but just leave the rest of the picture alone?

[Steve Clarkson]

Ok, I'm trying to learn this too. I cropped the head, resampled to 300 dpi 11.875" square. Used the freehand mask in photopaint to draw around it and saved. In draw, adjusted brightness/contrast/intensity to 35/49/-35. Looked ok to me. Then adjusted tone/curve by clicking on the 5th grid from the bottom and dragging down about 1.5 grids to make the middle darks darker. Power clipped into a 12" square and converted to bitmap, applied circle vignette. I'm having trouble reducing the cdr file size and had to save bitmaps really compressed to attach.


Interesting that you cropped THEN resampled.

Do you always adjust you b/c/i to 36/49/-35 or did that just "look good" for this specific photo?

Interesting that you converted the power clipped item to a bitmap....hmmm.... THAT never occurred to me!

[Tim Bateson]

Steve,

So many questions, you must have been good in school. Sounds like you've got some good advice. Is there anything that's still unanswered?

Basically I approach every photo differently, depending on A. the photo & B. what it's being engraved onto.

I have done a couple dogs in the past year. One order was 300 dog tags of dogs. In that case I decided to remove all background. BTW black dogs engraved onto a black substrate is a pain. The 1st photo is a bit out of focus as it was shot as the laser was running.

[Steve Clarkson]

you want to do testing on the image without losing its information instead of adjusting in "real time" which is destructive to file information, you can create an adjustment layer. By doing this it allows for tweeking from the original file with out "destroying file info. You can make different layers for contrast, saturation, curves etc. After you are happy with the image save it as a "full" layered file. for reference.
Next flatten the layers and save as a bitmap for Photograv.


Histograms, can be a quick reference to see the distribution of the tonal range. You don't want heavy "spikes" on either end as that will lose details. Typically it should look like a nice mountain range.



Interesting about the real time adjustments.....never knew that.....and always wondered why there was a preview button when I could see the adjustments as they happen.

Thank goodness SOMEONE knows what that histogram is supposed to look like!

Thanks Marty!

[Steve Clarkson]

I think I over tweaked it....

....and you wonder why I don't take Corel advice from you!

[Margaret Turco]

Oh my gosh Tim, 300 different dogs! You must be an expert on these!

Steve, the b/c/i just looked good to me on this photo. I'm still figuring this out, too! I cropped first because I could then resample closer to the ultimate size since I didn't want the entire photo. I thought I had to convert to a bitmap so I could do the vignette. There may be an easier/better way to do that. I'm really trying to get an acceptable result without buying photograv since I still don't foresee doing very many photos.

[Steve Clarkson]

the last one on the bottom right is the same image put through Photograv on the granite setting.




I think I'm liking the results of Photograv less and less......

I think the 20p looked best.....I like the matboard idea too!

But I wanted this thread to be less about settings and more about what you do BEFORE lasering. How did you get yours to look so good Dee?

[Dee Gallo]

Dee, Did you remove the grass in the background, but just leave the rest of the picture alone?

Sorry, I guess I should have said what I did to the photo - duh!

I first took the 72 dpi jpeg and converted it to 300 dpi greyscale and changed the size from about an inch or so to 3 inches, using PhotoShop.

Then, I removed the background by hand using the eraser and adjusted the brightness to about -40 and the contrast to about plus 60. Sorry, I should have written those down. I did not play with the curves.... I used the magic wand to select the background and made it black. I guess you could also just use the black paintbrush and do the background with that to avoid one extra step.

Then, I airbrushed the fade with black and inverted the picture. That's all I did before importing it to CorelDraw to print. This is what the picture looked like... pretty ugly. The one on the right is before inverting.

[Frank Corker]

This is probably how I would do it.

[Dee Gallo]

Okay, here's a head-to-head comparison. Frank's new dog is on the right. The top one is 30 power, the bottom one is 15 power. The 30 was overpowered, it lost detail in the light areas. The 15 is darker and loses detail in the dark areas.

But what I want to know is how on earth did you (Frank) get that much detail off that little jpeg? When I imported it, it was gigantic and you could see every hair! Shrunk down, it has as much detail as my little one. All in all, it was a bit darker than mine, but very similar.

Are we getting anywhere Steve?

cheers, dee

[Steve Clarkson]

Sadly, I'm not.......but you, Margaret and Frank sure have figured something out!

I wonder if I took a photoshop class at the local community college.....

It seems like I know all the right things to do....ie. adjust tone/brightness/contrast etc. but I must not have an EYE for doing it the right way.

Anybody got an eye they can spare....

[Andrea Weissenseel]

This is a very interesting thread. I did not try photos on granite yet, but I do a lot on acrylic.

For pictures like this I prefer ovals, because I think they look softer and not so much "cut out"

I use photoshop to process the pictures. First I changed the picture to 300dpi and used a vignette action I downloaded from the internet. I'm using the "Gold Method" but I activate the dialog for the single steps so I can adjust the settings individually for the specific picture. For this one I used brightness -10 and contrast -40, in the next step (the first masking) I set the radius to 1.5 pixel - this is what came out

Andrea

[Steve Clarkson]

This is probably how I would do it.

Once again, you have proven your greatness!

OK.....did you crop, use the cut out lab or use a mask to grab on his face? I can tell you rotated it.....

[Steve Clarkson]

Once I've cut him out I would then adjust the contrast and brightness.

Hopefully soon we will have sufficient funds to invest in that training program I've seen the info posted on here about for Coreldraw!

Do you have a method to your madness when it comes to adjusting contrast and brightness?

Which training program?

[Steve Clarkson]

I'm kinda partial to ovals myself......even on a square tile.

The Gold method looks very similar to Photograv......but I'm not liking Photograv on granite so much........

Thanks for showing yours.

[Frank Corker]

OK.....did you crop, use the cut out lab or use a mask to grab on his face? I can tell you rotated it.....

Steve I use a really antiquated art program called Photostyler. It was made for windows 3.1 (if anyone can still remember that!) but I know it pretty much front to back so doing this kind of stuff is relatively easy. I think it was bought by Adobe who later went on to do the photoshop series, which explains why some of the more basic functions in that apply to Photostyler. I enlarged the picture, basic cut out on the head and roatated it, then finer cut out on the close up. Feather all the edges.

[John W. Love]

No method to my madness as far as adjusting brightness and contrast...and I think I'm doing it wrong because I was making the pictures lighter and Frank said to make them darker, and we all KNOW Frank is "The Man"!

As far as the Coreldraw classes I can't seem to find it although I searched, but I know John will know so I'll ask him in a bit...about to go wake him up so I can spend some time with him before I have to go to work at Chili's tonight. I've seen several references to it on the creek, but now I can't find any of them lol

[John W. Love]

Hey Steve, John here. Scott Shepherd posted a thread about the dvd deal he got from Advancedartist.com . I just noticed that the thread was moved to Deals and Discounts forum, but fortunately I had subscribed to the thread so it was easy to find. I also see that Tom Knight, who does the training videos posted on there that he was going to do some training videos geared towards engravers and carvers which would be awesome.
Here is the link to the thread. http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=89290

[Dave Johnson29]

It was made for windows 3.1 (if anyone can still remember that!)


Remember? Are you serious? I use it daily!!

OK, OK, not so much out of choice, but win3.1 is the only thing that will drive my laser. :D

[Frank Corker]

Remember? Are you serious? I use it daily!!

OK, OK, not so much out of choice, but win3.1 is the only thing that will drive my laser. :D

Hey weird, someone just told me the other day that he had managed to flog a load of original Windows 3.1 computer systems to some guys living in the sticks.