Question on inverting photos into granite

[Robert Alexander]

Hi everyone,
I hope this is not a dumb question, and the answer is right in fornt of me. I have Corel 12, and when I go to enrave a photo( which is round) onto black granite after inverting it. I always get a rectangular box around my photo. So when the engraving is done, I have a nice engraved photo and the laser allways engraves out a rectangle around the photo. So how do it get rid of the rectangle??

[Bruce Volden]

Robert,

If you select the photo, then select the node editing tool, add nodes or subtract nodes where you wish. This will get rid of rectangle / square. I often will draw an oval about the same size of what I need from the photo, go into the wireframe mode (view), place this over the photo, select the photo and start with the node stuff. When you have what you want delete the oval you drew for the guidelines and you should be ready. Hope this will help.

[Aaron Koehl]

Engraving Tip:

If you're engraving a circular or elliptical photo, try cropping the picture by adding a vignette. This breaks up the hard edges on the engraved photo.

If you have Photoshop, I found a tutorial here so you can can see what I mean:
http://www.graphic-design.com/Photoshop/feathering.html

Simply "Export for the Web" as a .PNG file, with transparencies, and delete any background in your Photoshop file. I find that .PNGs compress well and CorelDraw plays nicely with the transparencies.

[Michael McDuffie]

I'm at work right now so I can't check the name of the tool, but isn't there a "power" something that lets you put an image into a "container". It's kinda like cropping but the image remains intact and the "frame", which can be any shape, sits on top of it.



Sorry if this is a little vague.



Michael

[Aaron Koehl]

Power clipping in CorelDraw.
There may also be a way to do a vignette with the transparency tool.

[Michael McDuffie]

Power clipping in CorelDraw.
There may also be a way to do a vignette with the transparency tool.

That's what I was thinking of.

Michael

[Robert Alexander]

thanks for the help, the node editing did the trick. I'm going to try the feathering option to get my edges softer. I'll post a photo of the project later.

[Robert Alexander]

Well after eveyones help if figuring out Corel. I finally did a project that I'm not embaressed to show, to all the folks at the creek. Hopefully I can upload it properly so you can see it.

[Shaddy Dedmore]

Hey, that's awesome. Do you mind sharing your process, settings etc...?

Really cool, great job.

Shaddy

[Robert Alexander]

Shaddy'
I have a 45 watt epilog Helix. I got a piece of polished man made stone from the local tile store (I can't remember the brand, but to me the engraving works best on the polished tiles} Anyway I tried inverting this image of the calendar on some black granite, but it did'nt stand at as well as doing a color fill, which is what I did on this one in the photo I posted. I set the engraver to raster with 30 speed, 100 power and 400 d.p.i.(300 will might do just as good with a color fill). The trickey part was removing the black paint from the surface without taking it off from the engaving area. So I let the paint almost dry, and went over it with a fine steel wool pad, that was wraped around a small flat piece of wood.
I'm going down to the tile store today, and get some of the other tile colors to try. Hopefully they will look as good.:D

[Aaron Koehl]

That's what I was thinking of.

Michael

Creating a Vignette in CorelDRAW:

1. Import your Photo
2. Go to Bitmaps > Creative > Vignette
3. You probably want to choose White for your color.

Anyway, it's that simple!