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Mike Dempsey
10-04-2009, 5:05 PM
I have received this graphic from my daughter's teacher who is a member of a local church and she would like 70 A5 engravings on beech or oak.
I have a Fenix laser which will only enrave b/w and wont do grayscale and I am struggling.
I have to convert artwork to bmp's and then import it to my laser software which is wimark lite. Normally jpegs dont cause me much trouble and I usually get away with 300dpi no problem but this time I am banging my head of a brick wall.
I have Corel drawx4 and Adobe CS4 and a couple of other graphic packages and I have spent hours playing around with it. It doesnt matter if there are no clouds and I can add the text back in again later.
I know it would probably engrave best as a line drawing due to the detail involved (I think I am correct in saying that) but when I convert it in corel paint I lose 90% of the detail. Can anyone please help me with a step by step guide.
I am a cabinet-maker to trade and have a laser as a small part of the business engraving my own wooden products and not too hot on the graphic design side - although I am learning very fast!
I would love this to look good because she is a really good teacher and this is the second year that Molly has had her as a teacher and this is a wee thankyou for her.

Thanks in anticipation

Mike

Dee Gallo
10-04-2009, 5:45 PM
Hi Mike,

I played with your image a bit - made it bigger, since it was only 72 dpi and an inch in size...not a good starting point. It's now 300 dpi and 5" x 7".

I removed the words and border, since they would be better added with CorelDraw anyway.

It's not perfect, but it's better than what you started with. It is still blurry, but that's not something I could do much about. Luckily, it's an inspirational image, so you can get away with an ethereal look. Good luck!

cheers, dee

Dan Hintz
10-04-2009, 5:46 PM
That image needs some work on its dynamic range, followed by some edge enhancement.

Martin Boekers
10-04-2009, 5:52 PM
You might consider selecting the building and creating you own clouds,

that way you have better control over the range.

Hopefully you have a higher resolution image or access to one.

If not you can res it up a bit in Photoshop but it's in pretty poor shape to start with.


Marty

Larry Bratton
10-04-2009, 6:35 PM
I have received this graphic from my daughter's teacher who is a member of a local church and she would like 70 A5 engravings on beech or oak.
I have a Fenix laser which will only enrave b/w and wont do grayscale and I am struggling.
I have to convert artwork to bmp's and then import it to my laser software which is wimark lite. Normally jpegs dont cause me much trouble and I usually get away with 300dpi no problem but this time I am banging my head of a brick wall.
I have Corel drawx4 and Adobe CS4 and a couple of other graphic packages and I have spent hours playing around with it. It doesnt matter if there are no clouds and I can add the text back in again later.
I know it would probably engrave best as a line drawing due to the detail involved (I think I am correct in saying that) but when I convert it in corel paint I lose 90% of the detail. Can anyone please help me with a step by step guide.
I am a cabinet-maker to trade and have a laser as a small part of the business engraving my own wooden products and not too hot on the graphic design side - although I am learning very fast!
I would love this to look good because she is a really good teacher and this is the second year that Molly has had her as a teacher and this is a wee thankyou for her.

Thanks in anticipation

Mike
Me thanks the teacher needs to do a little education herself and learn that 72dpi images are for a computer screen and not an engraving machine. I think your going to have a great deal of difficulty with this as a black & white opposed to a greyscale.

Doug Griffith
10-04-2009, 6:36 PM
Since it's going to end up as a bitmap anyways, one thing you can do is open up the file in Photoshop, upres, and then tweak each color channel independently to give the best range (of the channel). Then convert to greyscale and work your magic with the dodge, burn, and clone tools. After that, apply the Gold method or bring into Photograv.

Steve Clarkson
10-04-2009, 7:45 PM
Mike.....that looks like a famous cathedral......maybe you could find out which one and then see if you can find a better pic of it.

Allen Isakson
10-04-2009, 9:33 PM
Mike, There are hundreds of photos of the SLC temple online. Does it have to be the one she choose as this one is not practical as is. Do you have photograve as i have a chinese laser that does not except grayscale but photograve works perfectly. I would be happy to process it for you.

Guy Mathews
10-04-2009, 9:38 PM
Mike,

I resized this to a 8 by 10 and it is 300 DPI Grayscale. I did not remove the black text, I just ran this through PS in about 5 minutes to resize it and reset DPI for you. Not my best work, but you should be able to tell if it is going to work or not. I have a larger version of this that I made, about 25 by 30 or there abouts. The .ACE file for that is about 8MB so PM me an email and I will ship it out to you. Winace is a free download. I can not upload an .ACE file. SMC does not have it as an option. I renamed the file. To open it, right click and rename. Change the .ZIP extension to .ACE and then use Winace to open. Windows Vista (if you have it) should unzip it automatically but if not, just get a trial of Winace. Changing the file extensions is a trick the guys at Polhemus taught me for working around Norton Antivirus in emails! If this picture is good for you, I will spend some time on the clouds and the text for you and email you a finished file. Freebie!

Not really, my next goal is a laser for cutting veneers and I will have lots of questions. What goes around... comes around!:D

Guy

Dee Gallo
10-05-2009, 6:38 AM
Nice one, Guy! I couldn't get that much detail out of it - for example, the little guy at the top of the left tower - good job!

cheers, dee

Guy Mathews
10-05-2009, 8:59 AM
Nice one, Guy! I couldn't get that much detail out of it - for example, the little guy at the top of the left tower - good job!

cheers, dee

Thanks Dee. I have followed some of your work, so I consider yours to be the praise of an expert. One of these days, if I ever get my website thecncguy.com launched, you will be able to learn some of my "Secret Tricks of the Trade." Until then, I will continue to throw out the proverbial "Teasers" to whet the appetites of fellow Creekers!

Thanks again,

Guy

Larry Bratton
10-05-2009, 6:48 PM
Mike, There are hundreds of photos of the SLC temple online. Does it have to be the one she choose as this one is not practical as is. Do you have photograve as i have a chinese laser that does not except grayscale but photograve works perfectly. I would be happy to process it for you.
Good thought on the Photograv. Should work, needs to be rezed up to 300dpi though for PG.