Dog plaques

[Steve Chalmers]

I've read so many posts about black marble and photos that I thought I'd post up one of mine. I'm doing 45 different dogs. . .same wording on each piece of marble except for the name of the dog.

I have a 55 watt Universal. . .the settings were 100 power. . .42 speed. . .500 PPI

The picture really doesn't do it justice. . .

[Dee Gallo]

Steve,

What a nice plaque! The poem is great and the photo is well done by you too - thanks for posting!

cheers, dee

[Scott Perry]

Nice job, Steve.

[Steve Chalmers]

Thanks Dee, but I just got everything ready for the laser. The wording, and the design is all theirs. . .and of course, everything was laser ready.

Thank you Scott

Steve

[Scott Erwin]

Very nice work....I am going to have to get some G and try something on it. Everyone seems to have good results and the work is awsome looking!

[Albert Nix]

Very nice Steve, what did you have to do to the image to get it ready? Did you use photo grave?

[Steve Chalmers]

Albert,

All prep work was done with Photoshop. The original photo had big blotches all over the photo where it had gotten wet and then put back behind glass. . .it was terrible. When I spoke with the owner, she told me that she had a photo that would be perfect for the project. . .and in her mind it was.

I've attached the original so you can see what I'm talking about.

While I like the Gold method, and I've used Photograv, I find that for me at least, Photoshop is the easiest to use. Once I've gotten the lights and darks a little more uniform, I then import it into Corel. From there it's a matter of inverting the photo, and then working with Gamma to make the photo light enough where it will laser correctly.

Steve

[Aleta Allen]

That looks great! They should be very pleased with it as you should be too!

The photo looks great for what you had to work with. I will have to try to work on my photos to get the results you did.

Thanks for sharing this lovely photo!

Aleta

[Bill Cunningham]

Looks very nice Steve.. One thing I would try, is a few years ago, someone on this site that did a lot of animals, (and I apologize that I can't remember who it was), mentioned something that made a lot of sense. Animal fur does not reflect light the way human hair does, so what was recommended was to 'very lightly' use the emboss effect in photopaint (I'm sure photoshop also has it). this makes the definition of the fur layers and shade variations just 'pop'.. I've tried it, and it works even on poor photos, and it adds detail that would normally never be seen to the final look..