PhotoGrav HELP!!!

[Fred Ball]

HELP!!!

Tried to engrave a photo on black marble but after loading parameters for same and processing image it put a black box around the photo when I saved it for engraving. The background was taken out of the photo via Corel PhotoPaint and the image exported as 8-bit grayscale. Tried using different settings but still cannot get rid of black box.
Can anyone shed some light on how to correct this problem.

[Dave Fifield]

Hi Fred,

I just spent a few minutes playing with a photo to see if I could duplicate this. I couldn't. I tried cropping the photo with both Photoshop and Corel PhotoPaint, no difference. I tried all kinds of parameters in Photograv including the new Black Marble one, and, although it looks like there's a small white border added (when looking at the images in Photograv), when I import the engrave-ready image into Corel Draw (on to a colored background, to show any border issues clearly), the engraving ready image is perfect - no borders at all.

Therefore, not sure what the problem is. Can you post your photo for us to mess with? Also, the engraved image output from Photograv. What version of Photograv are you using?

Dave F.

[Fred Ball]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for reply. Here is the copy of the image after it was processed with PhotoGrav 2_11 and saved.

Thanks again.

[Shaddy Dedmore]

Not positive what you are refering to. Do you mean the black background, or is there another border that I'm not seeing?

If you are talking about the background... Could be that you had a white background, and part of Photograv's function when doing Black Marble is to Reverse the colors, the white background will turn white. One thing to do to compensate for this is pre-photograv, use the Flood tool (fill tool) to make the background black, then process. So, do it on the original while it's still color is best (less bleed through). If you haven't used the Fill before, make sure the tolerance is low otherwise it'll fill too much. Start at zero, then move it way up so you know what is does.

Otherwise, if you try to change it afterwards you have to use the selection tools to isolate the background again and then mack it white. The fill tool will fill too much of the picture if you don't.


Shaddy

[Barbara Sample]

Hi Fred,
I engrave on marble all the time using photograv.
When you are in photo paint, go to the background color and change it to black.
Then when you export into photograv, it will not be there. It changes to white and then you can engrave.
When doing wood, or acrylic this does not apply, but always do it for marble or granite.
Barbara
RGile Engravers
www.rgilengravers.homestead.com

[Fred Ball]

Thanks folks, will try the fill option as suggested.

[Barbara Buhse]

Substances that engrave light onto dark (like when you engrave black marble, the "engraved part" is white... Photograv seems to automatically apply the "negative". Sometimes I have to apply the negative back in corel before negraving (double negatives make a positive... or something liek that)

Barbara