Preparing Photo for Engraving

[Wesley Perreira]

I have been trying to prepare this photo as best as I can with X4 and Photograve. The results have been far from decent. I'm not sure if ya'll have been faced with similiar predicaments, but I need to prepare a 12x12 granite memorial and this has been the best photo the family has provided. I am very new to business and been reading everything I can about doing this, but I just can't seem to get anything very good. :confused: Maybe I scanned it too small? Can one of you experts please lend some assistance?

[Gary Hair]

If the image you posted is the size you are working with then it is way too small. If not, and you scanned it at least 300dpi then it should work ok. The contrast is pretty high between the face and background, I would suggest cropping the face out of the background and then darkening it up a bit. I ran it through photograv as it is and it was pretty washed out looking.

I don't consider myself to be an expert at photograv, but with a little bit of work this image should come out fine.

Gary

[victor belfour]

As stated make sure the image is as large as possible 200 or 300 dpi; whatever resolution your engraving system needs. Sometimes i get crap small images too. Sometimes they are too small. Try to get your clients to bring in the original or get them to provide a higher resolution image.

If you know to use photoshop you can use the dodge and burn tool to try and tone down the high contrast blown highlights. convert the image to greyscale, use the burn tool, set your range to highlights and set your exposure to 20-30% then try to click and add some darker tone back to the areas of the image that are totally white. Hope that helps.

[Jerry Hay]

If they printed it off of a digital file already it may scan like that. I have had customers that have brought me pictures on plain paper and those hardly ever work. If they printed it, ask them for the original on a disc or jump drive.
If you have to scan it, Do the resizing in your scanner software. I always scan an image to use printing or laser at a much higher dpi than I need. When you scan at a higher resolution and then shrink it down to the size you need there is much less loss to quality. Scan it at 600 or 800 and resize it that might help.

[Darren Null]

You SCANNED that? What from? The background is a solid mass of JPG artifacts, so something has gone wrong somewhere. Did the image you scanned look like that?

Either:

The source was an oldish cameraphone; in which case you're going to get the best image possible by asking if the clients can email you a copy of the original image. That way you lose 1x printing and 1x scanning processes and your image will be that much clearer.

Or:

Either the client or you, in some part of getting the image onto your computer has included a step with JPEG compression turned too low (ie, too much compression...which makes the file smaller, but makes the image look awful).

Actions:
1) If the image is a printout, request a copy of the original image from the client.
2) If what you have is all you're going to get, rescan at at least 600 dpi. 900dpi wouldn't be overdoing things. Work on the image at the larger size.
3) Clip out the background in a paint program. Replace with white.
4) Darken the image using burn/levels/curves/whatever. To be honest, the image you've shown us is pretty overexposed and there isn't a lot of detail there to bring back.
5) AS THE LAST THING YOU DO resize to 300dpi for the laser
6) Photograv & burn.

[Frank Corker]

Unfortunately your scan wasn't too good (did someone mention that already?) The best I could get it with what you posted.

[Wesley Perreira]

Well I followed your advice by scanning it larger (300 dpi) and the utilizing the burn tool in Corel. Amazing stuff! Got the photo to show up a lot better by darkening lines and shadows. When I first tried, you couldn't see the features on the face at all. Just too white. This was for my friend's dad who just passed and the family really likes it. Thanks guys for all your help, I really appreciate it!:)