Opinions Please

[David Rust]

I was just emailed a photograph to be engraved on walnut. It is scenery, something I haven't photo lasered on wood before, usually I do people, animals or objects...

Do you think this pic is workable? I have PLP... Pic is a jpg @ 230dpi

Thanks,256329

[Joe Pelonio]

I have had decent results with photos on light wood with little grain, like basswood. Light oak works OK if the grain is not too dark, there's pretty good contrast with dark on light. With Walnut, I found the engraving to be too close to the same color as the wood.

[Gary Hair]

I think that picture would be ok on lighter wood but, as Joe said, walnut may be too dark to do it justice. Best thing is to try it out. No matter what you'll have to adjust the contrast quite a bit to get a decent picture, but it's worth a shot.

Gary

[David Rust]

Do you guys think that dpi being so low will be a problem? The customer wants it stretched a bit leaving an effective 137dpi. I re-sampled to 600dpi, processed it through PLP (w/ "600 dpi wood Epilog" setting and a second transform with the "hi res walnut" setting), and ran the two test runs on some HD birch ply... not real impressed with the results. I think it is because of the low res of the original picture.

[David Rust]

Another question, I tried to apply a vignette edge (wanted a slight fade in on the edge) to the processed photo (bitmap monochrome format). Apparently to use the CorelDraw Vignette tool the pic must be an RGB picture... I changed the format of the PLP'd bitmap monochrome format to RGB and it totally changed the picture...

Is there a trick/tip/advice to get around this?

Thanks,

[Lucy Lee]

David,
it should be workabel ,here is a photo for triumphal arch ,which laser on wood ,some similar?
256359

Best Regards
Lucy Lee



I was just emailed a photograph to be engraved on walnut. It is scenery, something I haven't photo lasered on wood before, usually I do people, animals or objects...

Do you think this pic is workable? I have PLP... Pic is a jpg @ 230dpi

Thanks,256329

[Mike Null]

David

I don't believe that the vignette tool requires an RGB file.

[James Tan]

Should be workable, i would add a little more contrast and brightness to the image before lasering.

[Martin Boekers]

Are you converting in Corel Draw? Try Photo Paint. I am a bit confused on the steps you are taking.

I can make a difference in the order you do things. Any reason why its not RGB to start with?

[Joseph Belangia]

Like others have mentioned, walnut is a difficult wood to work with because of the limited contrast the darker wood will be giving against the laser. That being said, there is plenty of walnut out there that has lighter color variations that could give you the contrast you are needing. Not knowing what your supply access is, it's hard to speculate about that.

Either way, you're going to want some high-contrasting areas that give the viewer some depth. If you aren't used to what images look like before they hit the laser, then please avert your eyes. The image looks harsh and crusty, but you just have to trust that the laser is going to interpret the image way different than our eyeballs and grey matter tell us is pretty. If you go the route of walnut, then the dark's and lights need to play off of each other pretty dramatically. A lighter wood such as pecan or birch will really make this pop, but if your customer is hot and heavy for walnut(it's a beautiful wood...what's not to like?) this image will play out pretty decent. I have the PhotoShop file if you would like it...or the bitmap conversion, too. This will at least get you headed in the right direction.....maybe.

You could always slam the contrast slider to the end and make it a pure black&white linear image. Done that before....it's going to lose the photo element completely and look more graphical, but hey..it's an alternate solution..

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8088/8537285726_b3b74f06ff_b.jpg

[David Rust]

256408Thanks for the reply guys... The processed photo I was going to burn and the photo that Joseph put up are radically different... My photo was processed with Engrave PhotoLabPlus. Joseph's photo looks like it was transposed to gray scale, and lots of other tweaks... Which photo will give more desirable results, Josephs or the on on this post that was processed with Engrave PLP?
The uploaded file doesn't have the detail that the 600 dpi one has... had to get the size down to upload it

[Joseph Belangia]

..>Thought I would put up an edited version of my PM reply to Dave in case anybody was getting stuck on something like this:


No problem, Dave! It's really difficult to say which one will work best....I would lean more towards the graphical interpretation for walnut. You could apply the finish and let dry first, then run the engraving. Afterwards, you could backfill with black acrylic, then a final spray to lack everything in. The black will help it stand out from the dark brown of the walnut.

My interpretation of that image would look great on a lighter wood, where those gradations would have a chance to show themselves. I recommend doing two passes at lower speed. Reason being, is that your darker areas will also vaporize a bit deeper into the wood than the lighter areas. Kinda cool, really. The more passes, or more juice you give it, the deeper those will etch-leaving you with a slight, low-relief 3-D image. But.....and there's always one or two of those...is that the deeper you go, the more the gradations from white to black will be lost. There's always some kind of trade-off with this sort of stuff. You just have to find a happy medium somewhere in between.

I wouldn't worry about getting up to 600dpi on anything wood-related...you'll just lose detail because the material cannot hold it as well as something like marble or leather. The grain structure, specific density, blah, blah...all combine to make wood on the "soft" side of detail retention.

To get a bit more specific about your actual question: Yep, I do process the image in PhotoShop. I always convert to greyscale and spot adjust the light and dark areas. You want to make the material that you are using, work in your favor. So, if I'm engraving on marble, I'm going to make sure that a great deal of that beautiful, polished surface gets seen. Exaggerate the highlights and darken the dark's. It looks weird, and you'll probably doubt yourself no less than 4 times before you engrave it, but you just have to trust that the laser sees things different than we do and you have to account for the physical properties of the material itself.

That's the difference between images that get you noticed and the one's that don't. Practice, practice, practice. I know Allen Iverson is not a huge fan of this motto, but you just have to know your laser's output on just about any kind of surface or material. I have many pairs of engraved shoes, AlumaWallets, acrylic, marble all scattered around from just grabbing anything I can to find out "what happens when I push this button."

Let me know if you have any questions. We're all just flying around out here trying to make something happen with this machine, and chances are someone has had whatever problem you're encountering, so no shame in asking. Hope this has been of help...I've got a 6 year-old running around here right now, so if I inadvertently typed something about The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...please just try to ignore that part. Unless you like them. Then, enjoy.