Where to find artwork for engraving

[daniel coyle]

Hello - I have a chinese machine with Lasercut 5.3 mostly used for cutting. Just getting into engraving and want some advice on good places to source free or cheap artwork to practice with. I believe its called "Vector" art? I have google "free vector art" and gotten tons and tons of sites. A lot of them just shuffle me back to Shutterstock.com or end up requiring to pay for the download. Is this normal? Fine if it is and I am not allergic to paying for it but want to know if there is anything I am missing here.

[Dave Sheldrake]

*free download* and no cost are different Dan :(

I have a stack of vector stuff if it's any good to you? what sort of stuff you looking for?

cheers

Dave

[Tony Lenkic]

Daniel,

Try this site -------- www.vectorportal.com

[Tim Bateson]

Don't forget to look at Tattoo art and Scroll-saw art. Both tend to be vector, or easily converted.

[Dave Sheldrake]

+1 for Tim, Tattoo stuff is a great resource

cheers

dave

[Kevin Harris]

www.craftsmanspace.com (http://www.craftsmanspace.com) has some very cool stuff

[Bill George]

I've found in the past "free" does not always mean free and if it is a free download look out for virus and malware downloads plus the every present Yahoo and Google tool bars. Darn hard to sort them out and keep them off your computer. Especially computers we need to run our machines. I'd rather pay for quality I can use right away.

[Eric Claiborne]

A note of advice about using "tattoo" art....most of the time it gets ripped off the internet, with the actual artists receiving no compensation or credit for their designs.
I have been tattooing for 20 years, and have seen my own and my peers ripped off for all sorts of things, (especially by the chinese) and people make the mistake of assuming the artists will not come after them legally.
If you own a laser and have no artistic ability, i suggest paying someone to design for you.
I'm surprised to find out how many people in this business have no artistic or design training before getting onto it.
Aside from text, we draw everything by hand, scan our linework, make adjustments in illustrator or photoshop to make it engrave cleaner, and send it over to the laser.

[Mary Geitz]

I use iclipart dot com. There is a fee for it, however. Once you pay, you have unlimited downloads during that time period. I subscribed for a year for about $50.00 and have received some really neat patterns and other vectors.

[Bert Kemp]

Things I don't understand is how it gets on the net in the first place in a form that it can get ripped off? I should think that if the artist doesn't want anyone stealing his work he'd not put it on the net in a form that was easily taken.If I was a tattoo artist and wanted to show off my work on the net I'd take pictures of the work I had done on the person I did it on and then water mark the picture and post it in a form that can't be copied. I certainly wouldn't post a detailed vectorized drawing of my work. That just screams here I am use me if you like.
We here on the forum make and share a lot of stuff and that's great but you don't see everyone posting everything they ever made. Come on guys I want you to post every CDR you ever designed so we can all use them:D. If I post a cdr I do it with the understanding that people are going to download it and use it, so I would think that any tattoo artist that posted a useable vectorized drawing would know and expect the same :eek:jmo


A note of advice about using "tattoo" art....most of the time it gets ripped off the internet, with the actual artists receiving no compensation or credit for their designs.
I have been tattooing for 20 years, and have seen my own and my peers ripped off for all sorts of things, (especially by the chinese) and people make the mistake of assuming the artists will not come after them legally.
If you own a laser and have no artistic ability, i suggest paying someone to design for you.
I'm surprised to find out how many people in this business have no artistic or design training before getting onto it.
Aside from text, we draw everything by hand, scan our linework, make adjustments in illustrator or photoshop to make it engrave cleaner, and send it over to the laser.

[Eric Claiborne]

Bert, you would be really suprised by how much it happens......it doesn't need to be in a vectorized format to take and make something else out of.....social media is the biggest culprit, pinterest being one of the worst.....i could take a tattoo line drawing someone posted, even if it was at an angle, and turn it around into engraveable art in less than an hour. most artists do not post on traditional sites anymore using flash and such as that form of promotion has become obsolete, and can't compete with social media like instagram as far as generating business. A close friend of mine just found out that an entire sleeve he did on someone had been snagged from social media by the chinese, and turned into giant waterproof temporary tattoos for sale on alibaba.
Taking every picture you ever post and watermarking it first just isn't the way it is anymore, not to mention it always looks like crap anyway....most people i see doing that anymore don't even produce work justifying the watermark anyway.
Two of my co workers had their tattoo machines they make custom by hand cheaply cloned by the chinese about 10 years ago to the point that most cheap chinese tattoo equipment you find on ebay are direct copies made from inferior components, very frustrating....nothing is safe anymore and i'm sure many memebers of this forum have experienced the same with their ideas.
Anyway, I didn't want to hijack this thread from the original topic, but after seeing my designs end up on tshirts i didn't authorize, i know that our art is often targeted for swiping.

[Dan Kozakewycz]

Interesting discussion here that is relevant to me as I design my own artwork for engraving, in fact my entire business revolves around it.

I am aware that some unscrupulous types may well be able to rip off my images and reproduce the artwork themselves which does worry me, but what can I do to show it off without this happening?

[Mike Null]

The watermark still makes it more difficult for those who want to pilfer artwork.

Though I don't have any proof that mine has been stolen I am quite sure that some of my proofs have been used by customers to shop for a better price. On the whole, and after nearly 20 years, I consider it a minor annoyance.

If you can find older versions of CorelDraw on Ebay or a flea markets, etc. they had very good clipart files. I have version 8 and it's my "go to" art file.

[Bill George]

Interesting discussion here that is relevant to me as I design my own artwork for engraving, in fact my entire business revolves around it.

I am aware that some unscrupulous types may well be able to rip off my images and reproduce the artwork themselves which does worry me, but what can I do to show it off without this happening?
Post the preview images online with low resolution and small enough its not worth any ones time to try to enlarge. Make the buyer sign an agreement they are not to be resold and for his own use, and try to sell on legit websites not eBay.

[Dave Sheldrake]

It's as bad with laser plans, you can spend literally 10's of thousands working on a design only to have it copied very quickly afterwards. It's usually the backstreet non tax payers who steal them and sell via ebay but at least one well known company has happily lifted some of my own designs.
Sometimes I act on it legally, sometimes I don't bother....but overall now I simply don't sell plans anymore.

cheers

Dave

+1 for Mikes thoughts, I have a 20 disk set of clipart from an old version of corel draw somewhere

[Eric Claiborne]

Dan, using camera tricks like using depth of field to highlight certain areas in focus or app effects like tilt shift can help get the point across without showing everything.
'Sneak peeks' of a project can highlight an interesting section and generate more interest in the processes completion.

[Dan Kozakewycz]

Dan, using camera tricks like using depth of field to highlight certain areas in focus or app effects like tilt shift can help get the point across without showing everything.
'Sneak peeks' of a project can highlight an interesting section and generate more interest in the processes completion.

Thanks Eric.

Here's an example image I posted on another thread here today, showing one of my pieces of work.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xap1/v/t1.0-9/10689689_383408621825740_5455558616074485582_n.jpg ?oh=680ed34245c8be5878d515a5175d1891&oe=54EDEDB9&__gda__=1427868773_016157d6a49281eaf5f5913242ed0ad 7

Is something like this too easy for someone to lift and edit into something they can use? To my mind, the angle and low resolution is protection enough, but I can never be 100% sure.

[Paul Phillips]

Mike and Dan, I think what Eric is getting at is that no matter how far you go to protect your original creation, someone can easily steal the concept or recreate the design, their not so much stealing the picture posted, water marked or not, their stealing the idea and concept. We had a customer walk in our showroom and look at our sample book of signs we've made, they said "oh I saw that sign in the other sign shops book"! (our biggest competitor) They are notorious for ripping off our designs, a note from our lawyer slowed that down.

[Jiten Patel]

We battle with this all the time. Fine line between showing your products in all their glory vs people stealing your artwork. We draw everything from scratch and have the images of the finished products available on our website in good resolution images purely because this sells our business.

We have had countless companies steal out designs. Mostly on places like Alibaba but have had Western companies based in the US do so to. A quick email with a ceast and decist usually does the trick. Ultimately, I take it as a compliment that my artwork is good enough to steal. There isn't much you can do about it really unless you want to get into length and costly legal battles. For example, I watched a TV show about copyright infringement and that featured Dyson (the vacuum company). A billion pound company has literally thousands and thousands of pending law-suits regarding this, but even they do not get very far. If they can't do it, most of us have no chance. But as mentioned before, most people who plagiarise are small companies/individuals who will pee themselves with a threat of legal action.

[daniel coyle]

Thanks for all the great responses. I both got some great advice on original question and learned a lot about how the world of online art, ownership and permission really works. The problem I seem to have from downloading from at least one site that has been suggested is that, after loading it into corel draw 12 and saving as an .ai file (which, for some reason, has been necessary for me to import successfully into laser cut 5.3) i get pixellated rastering. when i design IN laser cut 5.3 I don't get this pixellated effect. anyone know what i might be missing here?

[Martin Boekers]

Learn the trace function in Corel. If someone created they usually own it and would like to get paid for it. If you have Corel there is clip art included on the disc.... ;)

[Bert Kemp]

There are a lot of places out there were you can get free designs to use anyway you want. There's many places that sell designs but give some away free also. Plasmaspider is one I use a lot. It $20 annual membership and you can get a lot of neat signs and graphic's that are donated by members plus there is a vast variety for sale. I have bought packages for signs and artwork to use for lasering .

[daniel coyle]

Thanks for all the great suggestions. I definitely learned a lot AND better understand any places where i might be unknowingly pilfering someone else's hard work. I was able to download some things that work but they come out "pixellated", not sure else how to describe it. The edges are not flush. Not noticeable from a distance though. Anyone have a sense of what could be causing this? I converted the files into the type that my software (lasercut 5.3) likes but...

Again, thanks for the great ideas and the heads up.

[Craig Matheny]

Reality nothing is safe on the web you post it someone will use it, you want your art safe two ways to do it first "Don't Post It" or secondly spend 35 bucks get it copyrighted and you can then have recourse for free basically to stop them from using it. We have had to peruse some people that tried to start coping our models from models they bought did not take long to stop them when you have a registered copyright. Just my 2 cents

[Dan Kozakewycz]

That's a raster file. JPG/GIF/PNG etc are all raster files.

The smooth files that scale infinitely without pixellating are vector files. EPS/AI/PDF/DWG are some vector file types.

[Henri Sallinen]

This is the curse of the modern age. Watermarks are not the way to go and there really isn't anything you can do about the ripping offs. I've followed a few original artists on instagram who've had their artwork stolen by other "artists" and even put up a public display claiming the work is their own. You can try to get these thiefs to pay for what they've stolen but I'm not sure if it's even possible without a big law suite etc. And if it's the Chinese who are doing the copying, then there really isn't anything you can do. If they are selling Apple / Samsung knok offs there without "getting caught" then I suspect getting a small artwork thief caught is really just a waste of time.

I myself am not that much of a original artist, but use vectors that I find on the web and edit them to suite my needs. I think I've got a pretty good feel about a website if it's distributing it's vector for free legitly or just sharing them without permittion.

Cutting it short: I think you don't stand a chance when it comes to protecting your artwork. You probably must show it off somewhere and you allways run the risk of getting copied!

[Brent Franker]

I've been doing graphic design type stuff for over 10 years. Nothing super fancy but still some original type stuff. Some of my ideas and designs I've seen show up on eBay. Like has been mentioned, you pretty much just take it as a compliment and see it as a sign of success and move on. You can protect your stuff so much that nobody sees it and thus nobody buys it or you can put it out there, have people like it and it gets popular, and because of this some end up copying it. I prefer that route rather than keeping it a secret and never selling anything :) Now, I do take certain steps when emailing proofs/designs to somebody in order to make it at least difficult or time consuming to copy it but about all I do is shrink the image down as to not make it a very desirable image to easily copy/trace as they'd have to totally create it from scratch. If I do an exact vector of something I may also distort it a little.

Bottom line, if somebody likes what you've done and are in the business as well they'll either copy it or do something similar. Best is to just smile and move on I think. Heck, pretty much every idea we all have likely comes from something we've already seen. Tattoos are talked about above so think of it this way... the first guy who did a tattoo of skin having the illusion of being peeled back could say that everyone after him is copying his idea! And, he probably got the idea from something else he saw. LOL

[daniel coyle]

Dan, if I find an image that is in jpg form from the internet is it possible to convert it to an AI file using corel draw and thus get rid of the pixellation. if so, i have not been successful with this yet.

[Steven Gray]

Search under "Royalty Free" images or "Royalty Free" art and you should come up with quite a bit of artwork.

[Dan Hintz]

Search under "Royalty Free" images or "Royalty Free" art and you should come up with quite a bit of artwork.

Be aware that "royalty free" does not always mean "free"... it simply means you do not have to pay royalties with each use/sale of the image. There may still be an initial, one-time(?) fee associated with use.

[Dan Kozakewycz]

This is what I do for my artwork, buts it's a manual job and very time consuming.

my work is simple line art, so it's just a case of tracing over everything with the pen tool in illustrator.

[Mike vonBuelow]

all-free-download * com has TONS of good, free vectors (website name DOES include the dashes)

takes a while to learn what is their stuff, and which is the ad for other 'for-pay' websites - but well worth it !!!

[Ian Wilson (AUST)]

Hi Dave,

I am looking for a heap of clip art etc to offer as part of engraving timber phone cases, chopping boards and plaques.

Would you happy to show me what you have?

Cheers Ian

[Bert Kemp]

Ian all you have to do is look on the web theres gazillions of stuff out there to find some free some pay.

[Bill George]

And if you purchase Corel Draw you get a lot of decent clip art. I have found that the "free" clip art online often comes with other unwanted programs and the free is worth what you pay for it. What you are downloading in some cases may look great on your screen but its really a low resolution and won't scale or engrave well at all.

Your in a business prepare to spend some money. Most is copyrighted so if your selling this stuff you risk legal problems. Between my plasma cutter, CNC router and now the laser I have spent a lot of money on decent vector art.