Glen Peters
07-01-2005, 12:47 PM
After reading the previous thread "Paint by Numbers....." I got to wondering if I could create a silhouette from a photo and cut it out of wood similar to what scrollsawers' do. The cutting is not the problem, creating an acceptable vector graphic is.
These are the tools I used:
Pinnacle Mercury 25 watt laser
HP Scanjet 5470c scanner ($30 Ebay find)
HP Precisionscan Pro 3.13 scanning software
Corel ver. 11
This is the original 5x7 color school photo of my grandson.
(Sorry, my photos are at the bottom of this post)
I scanned it selecting an output of "Black and White Bitmap". The pre-scan just showed a solid black blob. By selecting "Adjust Black & White" located under the Advanced menu and moving the slider around I was able to come up with something that looked similar to this:
Saved it as a .bmp, opened it in PhotoPaint, cropped and sized.
Opened it in Corel Draw and then traced vector lines around the black areas with the polyline tool. Had to make a few adjustments so I would not have a background area left within a cutout area. Hope that makes sense. Drew a box around it, saved it as a .cdr file and this is what I came up with:
Sent the .cdr to the laser and cut from 1/8" plywood, glued a piece of black/white IPI acrylic on the back (the only thing black I had handy at the time) and this is my silhouette.
Some notes:
I tried to use Corel Trace to create the vectors but it left a zillion line which I would have had to delete. Had I used the Advance Trace function an tried different settings it may have cleaned up OK. Didn't try it.
Don't know if all photos will work as well as this one did. This photo has the light source on the viewers right casting definite shadows on the left. Will try other pics later.
Time it took from start of original scan to a completed cutout was approx. 2.5 hours. Still looking for that magic bullet to cut the time down to minutes!!!!
The end results are not perfect but with a little imagination it does sort of resemble the original photo.
Thanks for looking. All comments, suggestions are welcome.
Glen
These are the tools I used:
Pinnacle Mercury 25 watt laser
HP Scanjet 5470c scanner ($30 Ebay find)
HP Precisionscan Pro 3.13 scanning software
Corel ver. 11
This is the original 5x7 color school photo of my grandson.
(Sorry, my photos are at the bottom of this post)
I scanned it selecting an output of "Black and White Bitmap". The pre-scan just showed a solid black blob. By selecting "Adjust Black & White" located under the Advanced menu and moving the slider around I was able to come up with something that looked similar to this:
Saved it as a .bmp, opened it in PhotoPaint, cropped and sized.
Opened it in Corel Draw and then traced vector lines around the black areas with the polyline tool. Had to make a few adjustments so I would not have a background area left within a cutout area. Hope that makes sense. Drew a box around it, saved it as a .cdr file and this is what I came up with:
Sent the .cdr to the laser and cut from 1/8" plywood, glued a piece of black/white IPI acrylic on the back (the only thing black I had handy at the time) and this is my silhouette.
Some notes:
I tried to use Corel Trace to create the vectors but it left a zillion line which I would have had to delete. Had I used the Advance Trace function an tried different settings it may have cleaned up OK. Didn't try it.
Don't know if all photos will work as well as this one did. This photo has the light source on the viewers right casting definite shadows on the left. Will try other pics later.
Time it took from start of original scan to a completed cutout was approx. 2.5 hours. Still looking for that magic bullet to cut the time down to minutes!!!!
The end results are not perfect but with a little imagination it does sort of resemble the original photo.
Thanks for looking. All comments, suggestions are welcome.
Glen