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Janet Liddiard
12-16-2008, 2:31 PM
This forum has been such a huge help as we've started our business. I'm hoping someone will have a suggestion about what we may be doing wrong on a project. It's due tonight and after hours and hours of working with the photograph, it's still not turning out well. If anyone can offer some insight, it would be greatly appreciated.

I'm attaching the photograph the client sent us. It seems to be in good shape, and at first glance no major issues. However, when we engrave it, the shadows and sunny areas are very exaggerated which makes the engraving look odd. We had to lighten the picture quite a bit to have it turn out at all, but can't get the details to look right... especially around the sunglasses. We've tried messing with all the settings in the CorelDraw Image Adjustment Lab, but haven't had any success (and we're ready to pull out our hair :-)

We're engraving it into the Rosewood and Maple photo albums from Laserbits. The engraving itself is only on the maple section. We're putting the photograph through Photograv and engraving it at 35 speed, 100 power, 400 DPI on our Epilog 35 watt machine.

Any suggestions?

Phil Garcia
12-16-2008, 3:54 PM
I adjusted the image and ran a test on a piece of dark cedar since I did not have any rosewood and it turned out ok. I hope this helps. I converted to black and white and then to Jarvis with 35% intensity (javascript:showCorrections('intensity,%20intensit ies,%20intestate,%20intensity\'s,%20interstate,%20 intensified','w0')).

Tim Bateson
12-16-2008, 4:24 PM
Use the newest Epilog driver and can PhotoGrav

Janet Liddiard
12-16-2008, 4:38 PM
Thank you for the help so far.

I wanted to add that the photograph itself should be approx. 5.3 inches wide by 3.8 inches tall for the final product. So, we've been resizing it before putting it through Photograv 3.0.

Also, I'm attaching one of the tests we did last night just to show how it's not turning out. Specifically, the areas around the sunglasses. Thanks!

Phil Garcia
12-16-2008, 5:00 PM
I did not see your attached file. Will you post it again?

Janet Liddiard
12-16-2008, 5:06 PM
It's not a great photo because it's from a cell phone camera, but hopefully it will be an okay example.

Tim Bateson
12-16-2008, 5:24 PM
As Phil suggested, try Jarvis within the Epilog print driver with a gray scale image and without PhotoGrav. I think you'll save yourself a lot of time.

Phil Garcia
12-16-2008, 5:41 PM
After seeing your test, I adjusted your photo and attached it. Try this one and see if it helps.

Darren Null
12-16-2008, 6:19 PM
Your panda eye problem was mostly the edge-detect routine in photograv. It was probably set to the default 80% strength which is waaaay too high for that particular image. The photo is a high-contrast image, but not necessarily where you need the contrast to be.

I knocked the contrast down seriously in photoshop (2.5x full strength), then photograv'd it with the edge detect turned down somewhat (about 50% IIRC).

5.3 x 3.9 in photograv'd image attached.

Janet Liddiard
12-17-2008, 10:59 AM
I wanted to thank each of you who posted (or emailed me) suggestions, files, etc.

First, I learned that after 1 year in the business, there is still SO much we don't know. I didn't know about the 'Enhanced Edges' in Photograv, much about dithering, etc.

Unfortunately, after staying up until 1:00 am, we still didn't get the photograph great, but we'll hope it's good enough for the customer to enjoy it and we'll get going on learning more about all these settings so we don't get into this problem next time.

Thank you again!

Steven Wallace
12-18-2008, 10:02 PM
Janet, You'll will find that most of us will never be satisfied with the quality of our work. Something about knowing what we will accept or expect from someone else. However, that being said, I have had customers rave over work I was satisfied with enough to sell but that I wasn't totally pleased with. You just never know when to say enough is enough, I promise this stuff will drive you looney.

john welsh
12-19-2008, 3:43 AM
try engraving it in stucki mode at 45% setting