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Dan Luciano
01-13-2007, 4:48 PM
I was hoping someone might help me solve a color mapping problem I am having with the latest driver from Epilog. I have a Legend 36EXT and supposedly when the color mapping is activated during the setup for the print process the laser is not supposed to treat the colored items like it normally would treat a filled item. I am not able to get this to work. I am lasering a detailed graphic and when I use the color mapping feature it fills the whole thing rather than maintaining the detail. Any suggestions will be appreciated. I am using X3 to run this laser.

Dave Fifield
01-13-2007, 8:19 PM
Hi Dan,

I have the same laser and s/w. It seems to work properly for me. Perhaps you could clarify what it is exactly you are trying to do. Are you trying to raster or vector, or both? How did you set up the color mapping (you have to have the exact RGB values that are in your artwork, or the driver treats them as normal black)?

Dan Luciano
01-13-2007, 9:11 PM
Thanks for the response Dave. This is an 8x10 plaque that is all raster engraving. The area I am having a problem with is some borders in the corners that are vector art and finely detailed. When I use the color mapping the laser
fills in the borders rather than maintaining the detail. I got a response from my sales person from Epilog and I am pretty sure that it is due to the fact that the vector art is multi-colored. I thought that color mapping would maintain the detail regardless of the colors but apparently that is not true. I am going to try to convert the vector art to gray scale bitmaps and run it again. Any other ideas will be welcome.

Dave Fifield
01-13-2007, 10:10 PM
Hmmm...I'm still not sure I understand what you are trying to do Dan. You started by saying it's all rastering, then say that the problem is in the border's vector art.

Vector art with color fills will laser as vector cut lines (around the objects) and the fills will raster engrave at whatever power the driver has been set to for each particular color (if you have the color-mapping feature enabled in the Advanced tab of the driver). If the fill is not a color that has a power/speed setting (you have to set them up manually), then it will raster as solid black. Perhaps this is what you are seeing?

Changing all the colors to a grey scale and then using 3-D mode in the driver may be what you need to do. The 8-bit grey levels are mapped to the power of the laser, so you will raster deeper the darker the grey. Alternatively, changing the picture to a grey scale bitmap and then processing it with PhotograV (or adjusting it manually with it using Corel PhotoPaint - takes ages to get it right apparently) will instantly produce a rasterable image that will look good once it's lasered on wood.

If you want the hairline vectors to raster, you should select all the vector objects and change their line size to something other than hairline.

Not sure if I'm being helpful or just muddying the water here....

Dan Luciano
01-14-2007, 5:04 PM
Dave, I may end up just having to send you the x3 file but I'll try to give a little better explanation. This is a plaque with four corner borders. What I am trying to do is to utilize color mapping to do the left 2 corners first, then the text in the middle of the plaque, then the right two corners. Perhaps I'm describing the borders inappropriately as vector art. In my object manager they are described as a group of 139 objects and they are multi-colored. This job is totally rastor, including the images. When I run it normally without color mapping, the detail of the corner borders is very intricate which is what I am trying to maintain. When I use color mapping to isolate the three different areas, the borders are totally filled in like they are filled in one color. I lose all of the detail. When I convert the corners to a gray scale bitmap, they cannot be selected with color mapping. I guess I was under the assumption that when in color mapping mode, using colors to select designated print areas would not actually change the print quality of those selected areas. I guess I am missing something there. I understand what you are saying about using the 3D feature but again, I can't designate a different power and speed setting to the bitmaps because I cannot apply a color to them. I hope this helps a little and I really appreciate your recommendations.

Dave Jones
01-14-2007, 7:07 PM
When you use the laser without color mapping, but using a colored image, the colors are translated into either halftone or dither patterns (depends on whether you select clipart or photograph in the advanced tab). The resulting engraving seems to have shades of gray based on the brightness of the original colors.

When you use color maping the colors are engraved without those patterns and are engraved as if they were pure black. Except that you can set the power level for each of the different colors, if you specify the exact color in the list of mapped colors. Any colors in the graphic that do not exactly match one of the colors in your color list are engraved using the default settings on the main tab of the driver.

So, for example, lets say you have a border made up of a blue rectangle with a yellow line in it and some red circles. If you list the exact RGB values of those 3 colors in the color mapping list you can specify the power/speed levels there for them. If you specify the same power/speed for all three then they all look the same and all you see is a solid rectangle. If you specify a different power for each of them, then they will be engraved at those levels and be different from each other. If you specify colors by guessing, and the colors are not the exact RGB values of the graphic, then they don't match the colors you specify and all engrave with the speed/power on the main tab.

Since there is no dither or halftone, how the different power levels look will depend on your material. In wood it engraves to different depths, which might not give you much visual contrast, depending on the type of wood. This looks very different that the shades created by halftones and dithering. If you need that shading, you might need to run the layers through some type of pattern first to create dots or lines that can simulate shades when engraved.

Dan Luciano
01-15-2007, 7:45 PM
Thanks for the help. I believe what I was trying to do is not possible with color mapping given that not only are there different colors in the images but there are different shades of the same colors. Thanks again for your time and suggestions.:)