Newbie question on lasering a photo

[Mike Galea]

I just purchased my first laser (a Chinese machine 80watt) which runs Lasercut5 along with Corelx5. I would like to start lasering photos onto different materials such as wood, anondized aluminum, leather. My question is what is the best way to save the file in Corel to get the best output. I changed the photo to B&W 1 bit, (which is what my instructions say is the best, but the output is distorted. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Dan Hintz]

Pics of the problem help here...

[Mike Galea]

Dan,

I am not quite sure what you are saying !

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

I just purchased my first laser (a Chinese machine 80watt) which runs Lasercut5 along with Corelx5. I would like to start lasering photos onto different materials such as wood, anondized aluminum, leather. My question is what is the best way to save the file in Corel to get the best output. I changed the photo to B&W 1 bit, (which is what my instructions say is the best, but the output is distorted. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

The best help you can receive is to read the old posts in this forum! This question has come up and has been answered many, many, many times in older threads.

[Dan Hintz]

You say the output is distorted, but that tells us nothing about the problem other than you're not happy with the output. Without a clear idea as to what the problem is, we can't really help you. Pics work wonders here...

[George M. Perzel]

Mike;
Not sure where you got your instructions but they are wrong. Save as greyscale bitmap and use Photograv or Gold method (search forum). BW 1 bit loses all shades of grey which is definitely not what you want.
Best Regards,
George
Laserarts

[Bill Cunningham]

Anodized aluminum and leather are both high res. materials, and as such you can etch them directlyt from a greyscale photo without using photograv. (experiment with speed power) Wood is not as high res, and the photo must be converted to 1 bit files first.

[Dan Hintz]

Bill,

You consider leather to be hi-res?! Aluminum, yes, but leather?

[Mike Null]

Dan

That depends on the leather. Some is indeed pretty high res. as are some types of wood. Obviously, textured leather wouldn't be one of them.

Often the detail on such substrates is determined by one's skill at operating the machine.

[Vicki Rivrud]

Hi Dan,
As with most Chinese lasers which do not process greyscale images, file preparation is paramount to the final result, a bit more time will be required.

As a beginner you really need to read the post here on the subject, looking into photograv for processing your file but you will have to prep the file a bit more in Corel before using Photograv. All photos are not created equal, so choice your photos well before attempting. I have found that a good balance of black and white will give you the best results. Using the "Gold Method" if a Photoshop user is great too, I use Corel.

There are several tutorials also posted on youtube and doing an internet search should also yield several more.
IMHO- you have to understand the process before you get the result you are looking for.

Vicki

[Dan Hintz]

Hi Dan,
As with most Chinese lasers...

I assume you meant to address this to Mike, Vicki...

[Steven Cox]

Have of you guys heard of a plugin for Photoshop called Rastus if so then you'll know how brilliant it is for creating black & white halftone images that you'd swear are greyscale and are just brilliant for lasering photos. I tried photograv but I just couldn't get the results I wanted, then I found Rastus and it's a fraction of the price of photograv. OK so its not macro based so you'll need to do a bit of image adjustments before running it through Rastus but the results are well worth it. What's more I've been able to convert the worst low res photo's supplied by customers to produce a reasonable result.

Obviously good images are better but it's hard to educate some customers who can't get past...."but it looks gook on my computer" you know the type.

Here's a link for Rastus Info
http://www.telegraphics.com.au/sw/info/rastus.html

If you want some short cuts on creating images for laser with Photoshop/Rastus just let me know & I'll post a tutorial with some recommended settings.

[Dan Hintz]

Here's a link for Rastus Info

Sorry, sales are suspended pending new payment processing arrangements. Also: AVOID Paymate!

That doesn't look good...

[Steven Cox]

That doesn't look good...

Hi Dan, I took the link from an old bookmark, just looked myself can see that but the paypal link on the first page works. Although I'd question the price I paid $49 for it about 2 years ago which really was the best money I've ever spent on graphics s/ware. And if you are wondering... no I'm not affiliated with them.

I used Ratus about 20 years ago for outputting AO size posters, back in the days when an image setter would take days to process the plates. The rastus conversion however turned days into hours. But for the Laser you only need to work in greyscale but it is possible to do CMYK separations as well. When I couldn't get the results from photograv I thought back to the days of using Rastus, it took me a while to find it again but it was worth the effort.

I've now worked out settings for image conversion that works on just about any image (after its clipped) so it now takes me less than 5 min to convert an image ready to laser.

I tried to upload a sample image here but upload won't accept .tif saving an image .jpg won't work because the converted image is bitmap & .jpg doesn't save in 1 bit. So to give you a sample here's a corel file (x4) with the tif imported into it. Note unlike photoshop, corel doesn't display 1 bit images all that well. If you wanted you could engrave this yourself onto some light wood. Other than that if you PM me your email I'll send you the tif which its less than 1/2mb or send me an image of your own & I'll convert it.

Ricki2.cdr

Lately I've also started exprimenting with using Corel Trace to vectorize the rastus converted images at this stage though the results are a bit hit & miss and definately not as good as running the tif image. File size as vector is also very large due to complexity of the nodes.

Regards Steve.

[Steven Cox]

OK I've worked out how to attach a zip in forum posts using the Basic Uploader link.

The attached zip contains a .tif image that's been converted by Rastus. Open this in Photoshop or PhotoPaint and view at actual pixels. Then zoom it to see the detail.
You'll see that its all black.... no grey scale!. The Halftone that Rastus produces is very detailed unlike anything that PS or PP can produce. I can tell you that this image engraved beautifuly on both natural and coffee bamboo ply.

granny.Gray.tif.zip