Photo Editing

[Andy Joe]

Im new to the rasther world. My computer skills come from the vector side of things. As i am doing more photo lasering on marble im finding out i cant just take the pic and run it. Somehow people are editing them to get better results. Im not sure what i should be doing or looking for. I did some browsing and found Lasertile.com. I understand why i would like to buy their tiles, but what i dont get is their photos. I dont want to pay that much for a photo to run, and i dont want to be limited. Their photos all seem to have black backgrounds and very deep contrast from black to white, and their tiles come out with white on them. Do i need to be making my photos look like theirs to get good results, if so how do i take a pic someone brings in and make it look like that? And why cant i get white out of my tiles? Any advice will help

[Dave Wagner]

You can do editing with a good Photoshop type program. Photoshop Elements is like $99. Coreldraw or any other equivalent would work too.

You can pretty much change anything on the photos, to contrasts, hues, saturation, colors, b&w and many other features. Not familiar with the engraving side of things...just what I use to modify stuff.

[Andy Joe]

guess i should list some things so its easier to know what i need help with. I have corelx3, came with laser. Im useing a kern 150 hse. I work solid works and then went into corel draw when the company i work for got the laser. I understand vector but im lost in rasther. Do you always have to adjust contrast? Im not sure what to look for. I learned corel draw by applying the knowledege i have in solid works to the help button in corel draw but its not working the same in for photo because i dont have the first clue how i should start modifiyin the picture or what the terms are

[Darren Null]

There's 2 components here, the material and the photo.

The marble used is important; there's a good deep black one (that comes from South Africa, I believe), but it's expensive. What you're looking for in marble is a good even dark colour with little or no speckling or veining. Speckles and veins in the wrong place can easily kill an image. There is also dyed marble on the market that gets variable results. If you don't need the brain-damage, heave a sigh and pay lasertile or similar their exorbitant rates. Otherwise, get hold of some small bits -or free samples, better yet- of what your nearest marble stockist has to offer and try it out. You're looking for few flaws and good contrast when lasered.

The photo. Most folks round here use a program called Photograv to convert the image into black and white (NOT greyscale...there's not much in the way of shades of grey with marble...you either burn a hole or you don't). There's also some cheaper Photoshop plugins to get a lesser, but similar (and sometimes better...depends on the image and material) called respectively Etchtone and India Ink.
The conversion process is important, but you can also help yourself with an image by enhancing the edges and contrast- Photoshop does this in one hit with a tool called Unsharp Mask.

Search the board for:
Photograv
Etchtone
India Ink
Colour fill
...for a more detailed and varied explanation of some of the above...there's plenty of info floating around.

3 Final things:

1) Sometimes an image can't be done. A 640x480 fuzzy/blurry camera phone shot won't ever print onto a 2' block of marble. You WILL get people in expecting you to manage it though, if that's what you're going to be concentrating on

2) You can get good contrast on marble by burning the holes and then colour filling them. Titanium white acrylic paint is the current favourite, I believe. Remember to wash your marble between burning and colour filling, else there's dust in the holes that the paint doesn't stick to.

3) Don't offer 3 pieces of advice if your memory is as appalling as mine, because you usually forget the 3rd one in the time it takes to type the other 2.

EDIT: Oh yeah: Forget Corel as a bitmap editor. It'll get results, but second-rate ones.

Probably the best thing you can do is get Photograv. Just feed your image in and it'll do all of the work and spit out a laserable image; which you import into Corel and laser. You'll need an image editor too, to fluff the images up and make them Photograv-ready (resize, clip out backgrounds (usually worth doing, often essential) etc). The Gimp is a free image editor, and is capable of doing pretty well anything you ask of it if all you want is to prepare images for Photograv. Photoshop is much, much better, but decidedly not free. If you intend to learn serious image editing, Photoshop is the kiddie. Both image editors have a fairly steep learning curve to use properly; but just resizing can be managed with minimal swearing. Corel Photo Paint will work as well for this, but I personally have never got on with it. I'm sure it's competent.

[Brian Knuckles]

Hey Andy,

I bought a couple of images from Lasertile.com

Ya the art work is expensive, but Darren is right you have 2 issues.

I've tried all types of ceramic tile & Lasertile works the best. As with marble, don't waste you time, money & marble. All natural stone is just that, natural...so every tile marble or granite burns different.

I'm burning slate right now and when I'm done I'll post my picture here...but it looks like hieroglyphics.

With the LaserArt, it works great if you do large pieces...I have a large piece that I did with horses 8'x5' and it was nice & easy to work with.
If you're doing small items, I would just buy nice b/w art from istock.com

Thx
Good luck

[Jack Harper]

Hey Andy,

...I have a large piece that I did with horses 8'x5' and it was nice & easy to work with...


Brian - Would love to see a picture of that piece. Is it tiled or on one slab?

[Brian Knuckles]

Jack, its a 4 by 4 mural...it looks very interesting. I'm half way done.
It looks just like a hieroglyphics... people have been asking about it...
I told them I found the image in the caves at the Aztec ruins & I had to cut it done into 12x12 tiles to take it out of the country...lol

I just bought the art work from LaserTile.com; they sold it to me for only $100
it looks nice...i'll post the image shortly