Trying to engrave business cards on aluminum and engraved plastic, need tips please!

[Nick Lesik]

Hi,

I have just started my engraving business recently and I have been getting alot of requests for executive business cards (made out of colored anodized aluminum and plastic). I have done my business cards on both to use as a marketing tool and I am getting really great results. My problem is a couple of things:

1.) I can't figure out which file type I should be requesting from my clients. Basically, which file would allow for clean looking engraving. I am using Corel Draw as my graphics program. Should I be requesting all files to be sent in black and white?? Bitmap/Jpeg/Tiff???

2.) One of my friends runs a business and his logo has some greyscale images in his business card? I am really struggling with these greyscale images? Should I try and eliminate the greyscale all together and just fill it in solid or white or is there a way for me to engrave this greyscale? I have been doing a lot of trial and error, and I'm getting nowhere with it :confused:

Any tips would be greatly appreciated! Thanks all :cool:

[Dan Hintz]

Aluminum is a very high-resolution substrate... in those cases, dithering can provide a very decent grayscale, and your laser's driver should handle this automatically.

For file types, your best bet is vector-based. Next up is BMP or TIFF... JPEG may work, depending upon how much they compressed it, but even medium compressions can show artifacting. Make sure any raster graphics (like the last three I mentioned) are of sufficient resolution... I prefer a minimum of 600dpi, a common choice with today's laser printers.

[Nick Lesik]

Hi Dan, thanks for the quick response. I am very new at the graphics on Corel Draw, as well as very new with my laser (it's a Chinese Redsail 40w, 24" x 16" table), so I apologize for any dumb questions I may have. I do have a lot of learning to do to become successful in my business venture. When you talk of dithering, what exactly does that mean? Also, how do I go about asking my clients to send me a vector-based file? Vector as in a cutting file? :confused: I notice that most artwork that I am getting sent to me is set at 300dpi, I guess this is standard. How do I go about getting a better resolution file sent from my clients at 600+ dpi?? Again, I apologize for the newbie questions, but I am here to learn and succeed :D. Thanks again

Nick Lesik

[Dee Gallo]

Here is a sample of brown aluminum which I did using an inverted image to leave the lines dark. I've use both PhotoShop and PhotoGrav to prepare photos and they both work well depending on what kind of "look" you want. I used PhotoShop to make the one with the halftone pattern.

The little boy is a small test piece about 3" tall. The other one is about 2" square.

[Cherie Irwin]

The most common vector file type is EPS, which is Encapsulated Post Script. That is the file type that most graphic designers use to provide finished artwork to their clients. Thus, if your clients' logos and artwork were created by a professional designer, this is most likely the vector file type that they will have in their possession.

Vector in terms of graphics actually means artwork that is scalable because it uses a system of points, lines, curves and shapes to create the artwork, rather than an array of pixels to convey an image. In other words, vectors that appear tiny on your screen can be scaled to a much larger image (such as bus and billboard advertisements) without any loss of image quality. Images that use pixels rather than points and lines are considered raster graphics, and they are not scalable. JPEG, TIFF and BMP images are all raster images and they cannot be scaled, at least not very much without losing image quality.

I don't have much of experience with laser drivers, as I am still a beginner myself. I'm still in "figuring it out" mode. But, since it appears that laser drivers work best with vector imaging software, it is probably best to work with vector images (EPS is standard in the graphics industry). Raster images, unless they are very high resolution, will suffer some artifacting in the engraving process. Again, I'm no authority, but this is my understanding. Since I am of a simple mind, I thought I would share my simple understanding.

Please feel free to correct me on any of this if I am wrong. I admit that I am of little authority in this medium.

[Nick Lesik]

Hi Dee! That looks great!! I just got my Photograv 3 copy in the mail on Tuesday and am excited to play around with it. So much detail, it looks very impressive. Like I said I am very new at the whole graphics portion of engraving, and I've been doing a lot of trial and error, with really only 10% of my results coming out worthy of a sale. All text I engrave is coming out great, I am just having a lot of issues with graphic pics. Some come out great but the vast majority looks unacceptable. I have joined to find some answers as I am struggling to produce a great finish. Engraved business cards seemed like a pretty easy process in the beginning, but I have learned that that is not the case. I will keep playing around with my coral draw or maybe even try uploading the graphics onto my new Photograv software and see where that takes me. Look forward to finally understanding this process :)

[Nick Lesik]

Thanks Cherie :). Wow I do have a lot of learning to do! I really appreciate your information :)

[Dan Hintz]

Cherie's answer on vector files is a good one, so I won't bother adding my two cents.

300dpi will likely be quite acceptable for all but the most detailed of work... try a few and you'll see if it's what you need. I prefer 600 as it leaves me some twiddling room. Search here on the "Gold Method"... one of our members, Rodney Gold, was kind enough to put together a description and steps to make laser-ready photos without the need for programs like PhotoGrav (I'm not a fan of it, others swear by it), and someone (maybe it was Rodney) also macro-ized it for PhotoShop. Plenty of threads with us discussing our different techniques, as well as extra tweaks for differing substrates.

[Dee Gallo]

Nick,

The most important thing to learn is how to prepare your photo. Using either PhotoGrav or PhotoShop (with or without the Gold Method) is only going to give you good results if the photo you use is correctly done. Each program has different preferences for best results. I've even lasered straight jpegs through CorelDraw (not the best idea).

So if I were you (which I was a few of years ago...) I would practice preparing photos. That means cleaning up or eliminating backgrounds, adding or subtracting details, working with contrast, shadow/highlight controls, converting color to B&W, etc. as well as knowing what your machine wants to see in order to do a good job. Each laser has its own way of translating images.

cheers, dee

[Bill Cunningham]

This all might be a moot point! No matter 'what' file type you want your customers to send, you won't get them..
If it's files from industrial customers, tell them you need vector files, and to pass this info onto the company that does their signs or graphics, and you 'might' get something usable. It it's a ordinary consumer, your going to get what they think looks good on the screen, and it will rarely be good enough. For example, today I got a email with a photo to be etched onto black granite, or Alder wood in a size of 8" x 10".. The picture was a .jpg of 240 pixels x 168 Pixels.. Even on screen it looked bad.. I've asked the customer to send me the picture and I would scan it no charge. I will probably get a 2" x 3" inkjet print on plain paper.. Sometime you could just pull yer hair out!!

[Mike Null]

The bottom line here is that you must make it a practice to charge for artwork as you would charge for engraving. You can rely on your customers to give you unusable art--it's a fact of life. If you don't charge at the beginning for the time you put into it you have only yourself to blame.

Besides this forum there are dozens of sites on the internet that provide free tutorials on all manner of graphics programs. After 14 years I still study everyday.

[bruce edwards]

Hi I'm new to laser engraving too. Started using mine in April. Here are a couple of photos I put on business card sized anodized aluminum. ( Just random images for practice) I only used Coreldraw to edit the photos. Open to any opinions on how I can do better?


200984200985200986

[Mike Null]

I like what you've done. Maybe just a bit more contrast.

[Dan Hintz]

I don't know, Mike, they look pretty good to me...

[Nick Lesik]

Hi Bruce! I tried sending you a private message but your inbox is full. I love the work you have come up with, it's exactly what my goals are for designing executive engraved business cards. I am also using Corel draw, but the tutorials I have managed to find online have been of no help. Most of my images have come out very boxy/pixelated. I've been converting my images to b&w, playing with contrast enhancement, using grayscale, Floyd-stucki, Jarvis, and all of these still do not satisfy my goals. I am starting to think it all breaks down to the images that I am selecting. Do you have any tips for me on the use of images in Corel. What am I doing wrong?? As I've stated, what you've managed to show me in this thread is what I want to offer my customers. It's perfect!

[Dan Hintz]

Nick,

A pic of the problem would help immensely. Are you sure you're only cropping the image and not stretching it?

[Nick Lesik]

Hi Bill! I agree, at times I feel like giving up and pulling my hair out, but then I see work like Bruce on this thread and I keep the faith :). I just need alot more practice and tons more information. Thanks for your info

[Nick Lesik]

I am out of town at the moment so I can't post a pic just yet. As for stretching the image I'm definitely not doing that. I am resizing the image once in coral draw to the size I would like to engrave. Once I play around with the graphics I send it to my laser program as a .dfx file (autocad I believe). Not sure why I was told to save the file in Corel as a .dfx file before sending it to my laser program?! Maybe this might be one of my issues. That I am not sure too sure about. I'm sure a pic sample of my problem will go a long way, so when I arrive home this weekend I will post my issues for sure. Thanks Dan :)

[bruce edwards]

Hi Bill! I agree, at times I feel like giving up and pulling my hair out, but then I see work like Bruce on this thread and I keep the faith :). I just need alot more practice and tons more information. Thanks for your info

Hi Nick I sent you a PM. Thanks for the compliments, I'm just a newbie...guess I got lucky with aluminum tho? :D SMC is a great resource with a lot of info and I'm glad I found this site.