I am brain dead today

[Cindy Rhoades]

Could some one tell me what I need to do to this artwork to make it compatible for engraving on marble. I have been hired by one of our local S.W.A.T. teams to engrave some award plaques for their benefit golf outing.
I have started replacing green with white and they gray in the gun with white but after looking at it I am not sure if when I invert it, it will look right.SWAT3.jpg

[Frank Corker]

Firstly Cindy you need to get a clean copy of that image preferably in eps. I have a funny feeling I have seen this one on this site before. You may have to do a little 'arranging' to stop it from ending up looking like a huge mess, such as removing all of the grey from the gun, the wings etc. What is black will engrave white, if all of the colour was removed you would have a very clean outline (in black) which would engrave perfectly without the need to invert.

In a nutshell, if you were to put this image to go through Photograv, firstly prior to putting it in, you would have to remove all of the background which is currently white and make it black. The problem here then is that the outer trace of this drawing is black and you will lose it. Drawings and pictures work differently. With things like this where the outline is black, convering it to something to go onto a black background is difficult, well not difficult, just fiddly.

So in pictures, this is what I would do.

Picture 1 (extreme right) is the picture as it is. Picture 2 change the black border to blue. Picture 3 now make the background black - the blue border is still there. Picture 4 is how it would turn out after it has gone into photograv.

Picture 5 is what picture 1 would look like if you ran it through photograv as it is .....would not work.

[Cindy Rhoades]

Thank you Frank. I appreciate the instructions. I have photograv and don't use it much because with photos on marble my editing turns out bettr than photograv processing. I am still learning. Everything I know is either self taught (trial and error) or I learned on here. This is the best classroom.

[Bruce Dorworth]

Cindy, I am somewhat new here but feel the same way about PhotoGrav. What laser do you have(watts) and what settings do you use for marble?

Thanks,
Bruce

[Cindy Rhoades]

Bruce -

I have an Epilog 45 watt 12x24. For marble I use 150-200 dpi with 50% speed and 40% power. I normally use 150 dpi but occasionally use 200 dpi. Welcome to the creek, this is a great group of people.