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View Full Version : 1 Touch Laser Photo vs. PhotoEngrav vs. Manual



Justin Stark
12-28-2018, 4:00 PM
If you engrave photos (I will primarily do birch plywood), how do you prepare the photo for engraving?

Obviously #1 factor is great quality photo to start with and choice of material.

I downloaded the free trial of 1 Touch by ULS and it's really nice to have the simplicity of importing the image and pressing a button to prepare the photo for a variety of materials. It does appear to produce nice results on the few photos I have tested but am hesitant to purchase the software once my trial is expired if I can produce similar results with Corel.

I have also followed the Roy Brewer method in Corel and it also produces decent results (currently trying to optimize his recommended settings for my laser): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0fOknlMKgk

Do those that use PhotoEngrav think it's worth the ~$400? The only price I can find for 1 Touch is $250.

Bill Carruthers
12-29-2018, 7:53 PM
I have PhotoGrav and have used it for a long time with mostly very successful results - but I'd advise you to have a play with Lightburn- a free trial is available
https://lightburnsoftware.com/pages/trial-version-try-before-you-buy - and included is their photo dithering software which I find as good as, and sometimes ,better than,- Photograv. It does require a bit more experimenting and tweaking but once dialed in it's really good and I now only use Photograv when I need a super quick result for an urgent job.
It's also got a great "Trace" facility built in and is generally infinitely better than the RDWorks that normally come with G.Weike machines - and only costs $ 80.00! Best money I've ever spent on my lasers.

Justin Stark
12-29-2018, 8:39 PM
I also use Lightburn! I like it a lot as well. However, I haven't been able to produce a quality engrave with just implementing a photo into lightburn and engraving. Is that all you do?

The results from 1-Touch look best so far.

Nicolas Silva
12-30-2018, 1:07 PM
I own both Photograve and ULS One-Touch. After using ULS, I've never gone back to Photograve.

Kev Williams
12-30-2018, 1:38 PM
I just downloaded the 1-touch trial, and I'm impressed. I don't do much photo engraving, but most that I DO do, I run on my Gravo LS900 because it does a near perfect job- but only on certain materials. With 1-touch I ran off a very good black leather photo on my GCC Explorer, it came out better than any previous attempts with this laser, which has an extensive array of photo options with its software...

I've picked up a new customer lately who's been feeding me photo-graphics to be engraved onto wood, the time it's been taking me to work the photo's into engraveable status has been frustrating; I ran a pic of one of my granddaughters thru 1-touch and sent it to the Triumph, thru in a 2x4 and, grain variegation notwithstanding, it came out nice! I may end up paying for this one...

Justen Harness
01-07-2019, 12:06 PM
I just downloaded the 1-touch trial, and I'm impressed. I don't do much photo engraving, but most that I DO do, I run on my Gravo LS900 because it does a near perfect job- but only on certain materials. With 1-touch I ran off a very good black leather photo on my GCC Explorer, it came out better than any previous attempts with this laser, which has an extensive array of photo options with its software...

I've picked up a new customer lately who's been feeding me photo-graphics to be engraved onto wood, the time it's been taking me to work the photo's into engraveable status has been frustrating; I ran a pic of one of my granddaughters thru 1-touch and sent it to the Triumph, thru in a 2x4 and, grain variegation notwithstanding, it came out nice! I may end up paying for this one...

Kev,

Have you done anymore testing with this software? Just curious about further review.

Kev Williams
01-07-2019, 1:47 PM
Yes, and I'm still amazed-- at least as far as wood engraving goes. Haven't tested it yet on other substrates, OR actual people photos, but I see no reason to think it won't work. I've NEVER gotten a decent photo on glass, so I'm curious...

But so far I've engraved a fairly detailed moose head and polar bear, and AR15, a log cabin, men's wedding rings, all of which were indeed click 'apply', save, line up in the laser and go, and they've all looked like they're supposed to :)
(stupid grain notwithstanding)

Scott Shepherd
01-07-2019, 2:47 PM
1-touch has been very good since it came out years ago. I wouldn't give you a quarter for Photograv, I didn't like it. Too hit and miss and took a lot of time to perfect settings, and a lot of that was dependent on the colors in the photo. What worked on one photo didn't on another.

1-touch has always worked. We don't use it now because the Trotec's have their own built into the driver, but prior to that, it was a very good system and not super expensive.

Kev Williams
01-07-2019, 2:56 PM
Gravograph also has a very good photo-mode setting, which I use for dinky photos on anodized aluminum mostly. It's also what produced that photo of my basement shop; works great on wood too but the 40 watts is the problem as everyone wants DEEP wood engraving, which 40 watts is slow at. Trying to create halftones that work on the glass Triumph has been mostly 'miss'. It's LaserSoft program has a pretty good dithering program itself, but it's very dependent on the original's contrast being near perfect.

With 1-touch all I've worried about is getting it close, hasn't failed yet!

Bill Cunningham
02-13-2019, 3:39 PM
Hello Folks...Been away for a long time, just trying to get caught up a bit. I have been using PhotoGrav for several years, and it works well. The main secret to a good engraving on wood or glass, is a good original photo. I won't consider anything under 300 dpi, or anything shot with an Iphone ;=) I use corel photo paint for the prep. I import the photo as a .tif (don't use .jpgs unless they are the original image (not sized, manipulated,scaled or anything else you'll get too many compression artifacts) go into the image adjustment lab, and set saturation to -100. Adjust your contrast, brightness,shadows and midtones until you have a pleasing mixture (this will take a bit of practice to train your eye to see clean images, trial and error is the only way) once you are satisfied, click OK and under image, convert the photo to greyscale. You can then bring it into corel, size it to where it has to be, re sample to 300 dpi and save as greyscale (.bmp for PhotoGrave). In PhotoGrave process the image using the swiss army knife of processing files (Cherry w/Vert Grain) and process the image. When you load it back into Corel, it will look weird because corel is not really designed to display mono images. DO NOT rotate of change the size of anything before engraving.
This has worked very well for me for many years. I have now retired, (as of Jan.1st) and if anyone in S.Ontario is looking for 'stuff' PM Me I'll see what I can do for you..

Mike Null
02-14-2019, 3:29 PM
Bill
You made my day! Welcome back.

For those not familiar with Bill, he is the master when it comes to engraving anything photographic including glass.

Bill Cunningham
02-15-2019, 1:31 PM
Thanks Mike...and Hi Keith... I'm Blushing... I'm just sorting out all my stock, and doing a big sell off ..ha.. Probably including the laser.. From time to time I will poke my nose in and comment on a relative thread.. Now that I am no longer in business I can reveal some secrets when the time or question is right.. All the best to all the old timers, and I'll try to help new ones when I can..
Bill

Mike Thornbury
02-20-2019, 1:49 PM
I’m also a LightBurn user and agree it’s $80 well spent.

Not a Corel user, though - I’m an Adobe guy. Photoshop is the dogz nutz for prepping photos. You can get lower-priced alternatives, but there’s a reason all the pros use it.