Photos on Trotec Rayjet - Photograv? or ULS 1-touch

[Ty Harris]

I've got a Trotec Rayjet as my first laser and had a brilliant idea after talking with some other parents. I was wondering what a good photo engraving solution would be for my 30 watt laser?

I've read up some on photograv, but not sure I have enough control over my laser power settings to use it effectively. Just heard about the ULS 1-touch, but don't know if it's compatible.

I'm thinking of a PTA fundraiser project to engrave children's photos on black annodized aluminum.

I've only had my laser running for about two weeks now and have taken hundreds of orders for keychains. I'm comfortable using the laser, but aluminum is a new substrate for me and photos are definitely new.

Thanks for any help you could provide.

[Dan Hintz]

the ULS 1-Touch program is only available for ULS machines, so unless you have one of those...

[Ty Harris]

Thanks Dan. Any suggestions for my project?

[Mike Null]

If you have Corel I would suggest trying that before buying more expensive software. I do very little in the way of photographic work on my laser but Corel and Corel Photopaint have always worked.

[Mike Ireland]

the ULS 1-Touch program is only available for ULS machines, so unless you have one of those...


Actually ULS will sell it to anybody. Doesn't matter if you have our laser or not. What we don't know is how well it will work with other equipment. You may be able to get a free trial version to see how well it does and then decide to purchase it then. Just contact our service department.

[Jon Colley]

Hi Ty,

Congrats on your Rayjet purchase!

I did a YouTube video (search for "Rayjet photo") of the Rayjet engraving a photo on marble. As Mike suggested, you will need a photo processing utility to get good results such as PhotoGrav or EngraveLab Photo Laser. I used the latter and the following steps to get my results:

1. Starting with an image of at least 300dpi, crop, resize and finally resample the image to 500dpi.
2. Import the image into PhotoGrav or EngraveLab Photo Laser. You may have to invert your image depending on the substrate. PhotoGrav does this automatically but EL does not.
3. Choose your material, process the file and export the resulting image. In EL you can print directly as well.
4. Import the image into Corel and print it out. On the second page in the driver, set the halftone to "color" and the resolution at 500dpi. The Lasersketch marble needs very little power (100% speed, 23% power looks nice).

If anything is unclear, just PM me. Engraving photos is an easy process but you will find that your results will depend heavily on the quality and contrast of the photo you are working with. Unless you are taking the pictures yourself and can control these variables, your results will be inconsistant.

[Ty Harris]

Thanks for the info and tips. I definitely will be looking at one of the photo enhancing programs. I'm excited to get started. Thanks for the offer on the ULS program Mike. I'll call your service department and see if we can work something out.