Engraving a photo

[Joni Campbell]

Is it possible to prepare a photo with corel draw 12 for engraving? or do I have to have photograv or one of the other programs I have seen posted.? If you do know how, could you give me complete instructions step by step as I am adventuring into new waters with the engraving. I have the cutting down pat :D I also have micro soft "picture it" & paintshop pro 8 , not sure if either of these programs are of any good for this.
Thank you in advance for any help you can give me. I focus mostly on designing and cutting stencils, but I want to add a gift shop section to my website.:rolleyes:

[Joni Campbell]

oh and I have laser master 8 that came with my accuris laser

[James Jaragosky]

Is it possible to prepare a photo with corel draw 12 for engraving? or do I have to have photograv or one of the other programs I have seen posted.? If you do know how, could you give me complete instructions step by step as I am adventuring into new waters with the engraving. I have the cutting down pat :D I also have micro soft "picture it" & paintshop pro 8 , not sure if either of these programs are of any good for this.
Thank you in advance for any help you can give me. I focus mostly on designing and cutting stencils, but I want to add a gift shop section to my website.:rolleyes:

I have heard others talk of doing photos without photograV. But I was unsuccessful at it using adobe cs / Corel draw x 3 or adobe Photoshop and producing anything I was proud of. I did get some limited success but not the stunning results I saw in some of the pictures posted here. That said I now have photograV 3.0 and I love it. I have already made back my money for it in less than two weeks on only 3 projects. (Seems people will spend more on their pets than their kids.) I highly suggest if you can afford it to get it.
I can process a good quality photo in photograV and have it laser ready in less than 5 minutes in most cases. Some tweaking is still needed from time to time but many photos turn out first rate with just the stock photograV settings once you get to know how it works with your laser. For instance I do mirrors at 50% speed and 80 power for a frosted look but photograV suggests 37% power at 100% speed. I do this because I get nice clean lines and only need one pass, and clean up of the back of the mirror is easier.
Anyway I was skeptical of photograV before I purchased it. (I was just a cheap ash and didn’t want to spend the money) But now I would recommend it to anyone processing photos for laser engraving.
Hope this helps Jim J.

[Joni Campbell]

Thanks Jim...I figured that photograv was going to be my best option, when I asked the fellow I bought my laser from about photograv he said that laser master 8 is the next generation...{ in so many word} and it has no instructions for photos..I will contact them again and see if someone there can help me with the laser master 8 and if not, the photograv here I come :)
do you send the photo to the laser right from photograv or do you import to corel or laser software?

[James Jaragosky]

I have a lower end Chinese laser. It is different for the higher end Chinese lasers as I understand it, the process is similar to the same process that the American lasers use. That being that you have a choice to save it into Corel and send it to the laser from there, or save it and send it to the program you are using to run your laser. I need to save the files as BMP, so the Chinese program I am using will be able to use the file (that or dfx if I am cutting something) I use two computers one high powered job to do the photo work on, and one to run the laser. I have them in a mini network so I can pull the files off one to the other. I hope your program works for. But photograV is the cat’s meow, simple to learn simple to run and great results. Win win win.
Keep us informed
Jim J.

[Joni Campbell]

I will let you know. I Design all my stencils in corel and then either save it plt - HPGL Plotter file and pull it up with the laser software or send it right from corel to the laser. anyways, I will see what I can find and practice practice practice :)

[Stephen Beckham]

Joni,

I've offered to the same for others, if you are interested - send me a photo or two - I'll convert them using PG and send them back. You then be the judge to see if you can match it. I'd be willing to bet not... It's crazy the difference.

After test driving - you'll probably be a convert as well. Whether it's the new plug-in that I've heard about, PG or that third elusive software that does the same. You'll believe that for those who say they can't afford $400 to buy it - in retro - you'll know that they truly cannot afford to (double negative) not buy it. The difference in quality of product will pay for the costs of the software.

Steve

[Jim Watkins]

I bought my laser in July and bought Photograv at the begining of August when they came to do my at home training. The difference is night and day. One of the things we have been doing is selling 8x10 photo protraits or just photos people would like to see immortialized in wood. I have sold enough of them to already have paid for the program.

I would not be without it. I just have to get off my behind and send in my voucher for V3.0. Mine is v2.11 and I want to see what has been updated.

my 2 cents is spend the $400 and get photograv. It will save you a lot of problems and bad work and wasted material. The one thing I will say is if, like me, you do photos in baltic birch ply, you need to lighten the work prior to processing in photograv. My experience is that the photo needs to be a little over exposed to work right.

I also test it by puting the processed photo into a 1.5x2.5" square and do a test on scrap. I center the part I am not sure on inside and burn a sample to determine if I lightened the photo enough.

Anyway, good luck...

[Joni Campbell]

well I would love to get photograv but at the moment that is not possible...I just got nailed with some huge bills for drilling a well for over $12,000.00 and putting in a holding tank $4500.00 and some plumbing $1300.00...killed my savings :(
so I guess I am out of luck for now since I cannot find the right settings for corel, I do take your word for it ,that the outcome is not comparable to photograv. Thank you for all your help with this.

[Bill Cunningham]

Joni you can't work the photo right with Corel 'Draw' but photopaint will come pretty close.. Rodne posted a very good tutorial a while back on using photoshop (the same instructions will work fine with photo paint) Just do a search, or if someone has them handy they will post them again for you.. This will hold you over until you can afford photograv..

[Kerry Smith II]

"Rodne posted a very good tutorial a while back on using photoshop"

Here it is

"Here's how to do it In photoshop

1) Convert to 8 bit greyscale

2) Resize the image to the size its gonna get engraved using 150-300 dpi (150 for less detail)

3) Bump up contrast and brightness about +25 in
both cases - you dont want the pic to be insipid areas of medium grey.

4) Heres the VITAL part - use unsharp mask at 500% and a radius of 3-5 pixels - threshold 0 - this will exaggerate edges radically , but thats what you need. In fact you can do this and then STILL add another unsharp mask at 150 % , 1pixel and 0 threshold AFTER the 1st unsharp if you want even more edge detection

5) Convert to a bitmap using 125-150ppi and a diffusion pattern.

5) laser.

that will give you essentially similar or better results.
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Another little trick you might try also is, if you have an RGB color image before you convert it to greyscale, use the channel mixer under Image Adjustment. Click on Monochrome and adjust the sliders until you get a pleasinging good contrast in the black and white image. Then convert to Greyscale. Keeps that GS conversion from looking so washed out as they tend to do.


Unsharp mask is under "filters" and in the "sharpen" section. It will allow you to input the settings.
The Convert to bitmap thing is under "image" then "mode" and select bitmap.
It will also allow you to input the settings.
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4. Unsharpen Mask is a Photoshop filter, found in the Filters menu. If you apply the filter it gives you 3 sliders to adjust the variables. You can apply it more than once by simply applying the filter again and changing the sliders and pressing OK.

5. The final step is to convert it to a 2 bit .bmp or bitmap. After applying the filter, choose Image/Mode and select Bitmap. You can then enter a Resolution in Pixels/inch to be applied to the image. It also allows you to select the Method, which represents a screen pattern. Select Diffusion Dither.

Just tried it to convert a photo as a test and it looks pretty good. Haven't engraved it but looks like there is a lot of latitude to adjust if needed.
"