Hello Everyone

[Wyatt Wolfe]

Hi everyone! Just wanted to stop in and say hi.. I am disabled from a surgery mishap a few years ago, and now have a lot of time on my hands, so I decided to do a little lasering... I picked up a Pinnacle ZX-30 and have been having a blast with it... and look forward to learning from some of you pro's... First thing I came across, is a lot of you seem to use this program PhotograV for doing marble and such, I went to thier website, and it doesn't seem they allow any downloading of trial programs before purchase.. I find it hard to put out over 400 dollars for a program I might not even use... Is there a trail version? Once again, look forward to talking with you folks, I have been sneaking around here for a few months, and enjoy reading.. thanks again...

[Joe Pelonio]

I've managed without it for two years now, but have graphic experience from owning a sign shop, so I use other products I already have and know.

From what I've seen/heard it's a good investment if you are doing a lot of work with photos that you will be making money on, it will save time and be less expensive than some other programs. What you get with windows is pretty useless for preparing photos for engraving.

[Wyatt Wolfe]

Well, I have been using Photoshop for many years, and am very proficient with it, and have used to to do the rough work to make photos for engraving... and I have Laser Master 2 for the engraving... I recently picked up a copy of Coral Graphics Suite 12 as well, but if PhotograV is going to be faster and get better results, I would give it a shot, would be more interested in testing it first!

[Joe Pelonio]

Look on the laser owner list for someone near you, and maybe someone will give you a quick demo.

[Dave Jones]

If you are good with Photoshop you can do fairly good photos with that. It's not as fast as using Photograv, and Photograv has a built in preview on certain materials that can save some trial and error. It also automatically adjusts the various settings based on materials used.

To get somewhat similar results with Photoshop you would:

- Adjust the curves
- Use edge enhancement to strengthen edge contrast
- Convert to single bit mode using diffusion dither at the target resolution

For certain materials you then have to invert the result of the diffusion dither. (ie: black dots in the image burn with the laser, but some materials, like marble turn white when hit by the laser so white parts of the image need to be black)

Photograv has several controls over the conversion to diffusion dither, including threshholding and noise insertion. You can do that with Photoshop too, but it's a lot trickier. There is no control in Photoshop during the conversion, so everything has to be done to the image first. With Photograv (in interactive mode) you see the simulation change with each adjustment of the various controls. Plus it lets you try various power/speed settings and it simulates burning with them.

[Wyatt Wolfe]

Well, If someone decides to sell thier copy because they don't use it anymore.. I would be interested...

[John Esberg]

Granted you don't have to use it to prep a file, it is incredibly handy for someone who is not yet an expert in Photoshop or Corel. I use it for most raster projects. Even if I don't use it's final output, I find it good for a quick comparision. In most cases, I find that I use it for my images to be rastered.

Personally, I'd buy it again if I needed to for work.

V/R,

DAK