Sepia Photo on Marble

[Carol Barbero]

Good Evening All:
I've been asked by my best client (my sister) to put the attached photo on marble. I've followed the advice on settings given on this forum with decent results, but this one is giving me a really hard time. Any suggestions; brighter, grayscale, jarvis, etc, etc?? thanks

[Darren Null]

That is a bit of a nightmare. All blown highlights with large areas of shadow. What I'd do is
1) Get this image in as large a size as possible
2) Twonk around in photoshop a little (but without a great deal of hope) to extract what picture information there is
3) Photograv it.

I had a little play and Etchtoned the result for burning at the same size (ie, quite small), but just for fun & I wouldn't burn this offering.

You didn't say what size you wanted the finished result to be, or if you had a larger source image. Assuming burning @ 300dpi, my go would only be 2x1 inches. With a bigger print area (I guessed at exactly the same size (9.2x5.8 inches) but resampled at 300dpi, things are looking better. I've zipped it up & uploaded it.

If you say how big you want the final image and also if you have a bigger source file, I can probably help more.

[Carol Barbero]

Hey Darren:
I'm putting the picture and some brief text on a 5x7, (engraving area 4x6) marble stand. The picture actually needs to be quite small - like 3 x 2.5". This is the only photo I have. It is actually an invitation that I had to scan. Thanks for the input.

[Darren Null]

Hi Carol. At 3" across, that comes to 1.9" high. Attached are both Photograv'd and Etchtoned versions in the zip file, both good to be burned with no further tweaking needed. Normally it's an automatic photograv, but occasionally etchtone comes across better with small images. I'd still go with the Photograv'd one, and the Etchtone is an emergency backup. I managed to bring out some details using the "Shadow/Highlight" adjustment in Photoshop. Miracle tool that.

Photograv'd version = 50 anivgravd.bmp
Etchtoned = 50 anivetchd.jpg

Remember when burning to turn your laser driver to Manual so it doesn't add another dither over the top and kill the image.

EDIT: The attached image is just to give you an idea of the detail I managed to bring out with tweaking; but I had to compress it pretty hard to fit on SMC.

[Carol Barbero]

Very nice Darren. I really would love to find a course on photo manipulation using Corel.

I'll give it a try tonight. Better invert too huh?

Thanks for all the help. I'll get a photo of it.:)

[Darren Null]

Invert...DOH! I knew there was something....

To be honest, people (including me) normally use Photoshop/Photoshop Elements (the cheaper lite version) for serious photo tweaking, so most tutorials are written for that. I haven't got Photo Paint installed on my system, so can't tell you for sure, but would start by playing with levels (if Photopaint has them) for this sort of thing.

Found these though...
http://www.huntfor.com/design/tutorials/photopaint.htm
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/photopaint/Corel_PhotoPaint_User_Resources.htm
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/photopaint/Corel_PhotoPaint_User_Resources.htm

Looking forward to seeing how it came out.

[Carol Barbero]

Darren:
I burned the photo last night. It came out much better than my previous attempts - more detail. Attached is a photo but I have to tell you it looks better in person. My camera seems to be having an issue with the focus.

Thanks for all your help. I'm sure my sister will be very happy!

[Darren Null]

You're welcome. It looks good, especially considering the source pic.